Actel and MorethanIP Deliver Industry's First Gigabit Fibre Channel Solutions for Military Applications

IP Cores in Actel FPGAs Offer Secure, Low-Cost Solution for Military Avionics, Industrial and Commercial Fibre Channel Applications

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., and KARLSFELD, Germany, October 27, 2003 - Actel Corporation (Nasdaq: ACTL) and MorethanIP GmbH today announced the availability of the industry's first Gigabit Fibre Channel intellectual property (IP) cores designed for field-programmable gate array (FPGA) devices operating to military temperature specifications. The new Gigabit Fibre Channel cores, available from MorethanIP as part of Actel's CompanionCore Alliance Program, support Actel's military Axcelerator devices also announced today (see related press release, "Actel Introduces Industry's Fastest FPGAs Qualified to Military Specifications"), as well as industrial and commercial temperature solutions in the Axcelerator family. When implemented in Actel's Axcelerator FPGAs, the cores offer the most secure, cost-effective solution for Fibre Channel applications across the full spectrum of operating temperature conditions.

"The Fibre Channel protocol is rapidly gaining acceptance in the military avionics market," said Yankin Tanurhan, senior director, Applications and IP Solutions Group at Actel. "The high data bandwidth capabilities of Fibre Channel make it an excellent protocol for connecting on-board aircraft computers with each other or other subsystems, enabling the protocol to become the network interconnection technology of choice for applications such as aircraft storage area networks, aircraft displays and integrated weapons and navigation systems."

Francois Balay, CEO at MorethanIP, said, "The security benefits and firm error immunity of Actel's Axcelerator devices, combined with the MorethanIP low-cost, high-performance Fibre Channel IP cores provide designers with an attractive solution that meets the stringent requirements of the military and aviation markets."

Fibre Channel is an industry standard protocol for a high-bandwidth data bus over copper or fiber optic interconnects for use in ground-based, aircraft and terrestrial networks such as local area networks (LANs), wireless area networks (WANs), storage area networks (SANs) and digital audio/video networks. Fibre Channel supports point-to-point, switch fabric and arbitrated loop link connections. Its data throughput is scalable from 100 Mbps to over 1 Gbps.

The two new Fibre Channel CompanionCores, a Gigabit Fibre Channel Transport Core and a Gigabit Fibre Channel B Port Controller Core, both easily meet the Gigibit Fibre Channel operation requirement of 1.06 Gbps in Actel's Axcelerator devices under military (-55C to 125C), industrial (-40C to +85C) and commercial (0 to +70C) temperature grades.

The Gigabit Fibre Channel Transport Core supports standard Fibre Channel applications and implements Fibre Channel higher PHY (Fibre Channel FC-1) layer and MAC (Lower FC-2) layer functions such as line coding (8B/10B), DC balancing, CRC check and calculation, frame encapsulation, primitive generation and decoding, and credit based flow control. Through Actel's Axcelerator device I/Os, the Fibre Channel transport core can also interface to industry standard SERDES devices via a built-in 10-bit interface. The B_PORT Controller core enables designers to implement Fibre Channel bridging applications, such as Fibre Channel over SONET or Fiber Channel over Ethernet.

Pricing and Availability

As an Actel CompanionCore Alliance Program member, MorethanIP has optimized its Fibre Channel IP cores for Actel's entire family of Axcelerator devices. The cores, which run seamlessly with Actel's Libero integrated development environment (IDE) and Designer tool suites, are available immediately from MorethanIP as synthesizable VHDL or Verilog source code or as an Actel-optimized netlist. Pricing for the Gigabit Fibre Channel Transport Core starts at $22,000 for an optimized Actel netlist.

Actel DirectCore and CompanionCore Solutions

Actel offers its own system-level IP solutions, called DirectCores, specifically designed and optimized for use with Actel devices. The company also offers third-party IP blocks, called CompanionCores, that have been tested and verified in Actel FPGAs. Covering applications ranging from embedded systems to consumer and communications, the cores offered include bus interfaces, communication controllers and interfaces, processors and peripherals, encryption, memory controllers as well as multimedia and error correction.

Actel DirectCores and CompanionCore products offer seamless implementation through Actel's suite of internal and third-party EDA development tools, documentation, and quality service and support, thereby streamlining the design process, enabling faster time-to-market and minimizing design costs and risks. For more information on the CompanionCore Alliance Program, DirectCores or CompanionCores, visit the IP section on the Actel Web site at http://www.actel.com/products/ip/index.html.

About the Axcelerator Device Family

Built on the company's AX architecture, the antifuse-based Axcelerator family delivers better than 500 MHz internal operation and up to 100 percent resource utilization. Additionally, the company's live at power-up, single-chip Axcelerator FPGAs avoid in-rush current spikes, simplify system power supply design and generally offer lower standby and dynamic power consumption than competing solutions. The devices offer levels of design security beyond SRAM-based offerings and conventional ASIC solutions, enabling designers to safeguard against common security problems, including overbuilding, cloning, reverse engineering and denial of service. Firm errors, which occur when high-energy neutrons generated in the upper atmosphere strike the configured cell of an SRAM-based FPGA, can be impossible to prevent. Because the antifuse configuration cannot be altered once programmed, firm errors in Axcelerator FPGAs are nonexistent.

About MorethanIP

MorethanIP was founded 1999 as a GmbH (Ltd.) in Munich Germany and is an IP and design house concentrating on high-speed communications and embedded systems. This includes design specification and implementation of standard products, system architectures and customer specific solutions. For more information on the company and its products, please email info@morethanip.com or visit the company's website at www.morethanip.com.

About Actel

Actel Corporation is a supplier of innovative programmable logic solutions, including field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) based on antifuse and flash technologies, high-performance intellectual property (IP) cores, software development tools and design services, targeted for the high-speed communications, application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) replacement and radiation-tolerant markets. Founded in 1985, Actel employs approximately 500 people worldwide. The Company is traded on the Nasdaq National Market under the symbol ACTL and is headquartered at 2061 Stierlin Court, Mountain View, CA, 94043-4655. Telephone: 888-99-ACTEL (992-2835). Internet: http://www.actel.com.

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