Altera Ships the Industry's First FPGA with 20 High-Speed Transceiver Channels

Altera Ships Two More Stratix GX Transceiver-Based FPGAs,Extending 0.13-micron Product Availability

San Jose, Calif., May 20, 2003-- Extending its track record of engineering excellence on TSMC's 0.13-micron process technology, Altera Corporation (NASDAQ: ALTR) today announced that it is shipping the industry's first FPGA with 20 high-speed transceiver channels, the Stratix^™ GX EP1SGX40G device. In addition, the Stratix GX EP1SGX40D device featuring eight high-speed transceiver channels is also shipping to customers. With five members of the Stratix GX family now rolled out, Altera plans to begin shipping the remaining two members in the third quarter of this year.

"We have received our first Stratix GX EP1SGX40 devices and look forward to putting them to work," said Bryan Hoyer, president of OmniWerks. "The high-speed transceiver capabilities in Altera's Stratix GX FPGAs allow us to package a complete OC48 engine on a PC Card form factor."

Stratix GX FPGAs combine 3.125-Gbps transceiver technology with the industry's fastest FPGA architecture to enable the rapid data transfer rates required by today's bandwidth-intensive applications. The EP1SGX40G device is the only FPGA available delivering 20, 3.125-Gbps-transceiver channels. It is also the only FPGA available delivering 45 channels of embedded dynamic phase alignment (DPA) that support 1-Gbps source-synchronous communication. Its ability to handle heavy data loads at high transmission rates makes it the optimal choice for high-speed communications applications with extremely high traffic volumes.

"The Stratix GX device family provides industry-leading features including low power (450 mW per transmission quad), equalization, and embedded DPA," said Tim Colleran, Altera's vice president of product marketing. "Delivering 20 transceiver channels at the speed customers need today highlights clear alignment between Altera's product capabilities and customer requirements."

The Stratix GX family is the only line of FPGAs to deliver the speed and reliability offered by embedded DPA. By incorporating the DPA feature directly in the silicon's source-synchronous channels, Stratix GX devices provide a verified, reliable solution for both skew reduction and higher-speed data transmission. A soft DPA implementation, by contrast, ties up valuable logic resources, can rapidly consume a device's global clocks and phase locked loops (PLLs), and tends to become error-prone in the face of temperature or voltage variances. Embedded DPA avoids these problems and delivers error-free data transmission.

Availability
Engineering samples of both the Stratix GX EP1SGX40D and EP1SGX40G devices are available today with production device availability scheduled for later this year. Pricing for the EP1SGX40D device in quantities of 1,000 begins at $1,060. Pricing for the EP1SGX40G device in the same quantities begins at $1,180.

To find out more about the shipping status of Stratix GX devices, visit Altera's website at: www.altera.com/products/devices/stratixgx/overview/sgx-overview.html.

About Stratix GX Devices
The Stratix GX family is Altera's second-generation embedded transceiver family based on a 0.13-micron process technology with 1.5-V core voltage. Stratix GX devices have up to 20 embedded 3.125-Gbps transceivers and up to 45 differential I/O pins with dedicated DPA capability supporting up to 1-Gbps source-synchronous data transfers. For more information about the Stratix GX device family, visit www.altera.com/products/devices/stratixgx/sgx-index.jsp.

About Altera
Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, Altera Corporation (NASDAQ: ALTR) is the world's pioneer in system-on-a-programmable-chip (SOPC) solutions. Combining programmable logic technology with software tools, intellectual property, and technical services, Altera provides high-value programmable solutions to approximately 14,000 customers worldwide. More information is available at www.altera.com.

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