StarGen Partners With Altera to Provide StarFabric Switched Interconnect Cores For Mercury(TM) PLDs

Mercury(TM) PLD Performance Essential to Meeting StarFabric Speed Requirements

SAN JOSE, Calif., Dec. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Altera Corporation (Nasdaq: ALTR - news) and StarGen, Inc. announced today that they are joining forces to advance the rapid development of StarFabric-compatible solutions using Altera's Mercury(TM) programmable logic devices (PLDs). Developed to meet the needs of next-generation communication and embedded systems, StarFabric is a high-speed switched interconnect technology that enables the creation of scalable, highly reliable systems with an easy migration path from existing industry-standard bus architectures. Bridging between StarFabric and existing or emerging architectures requires devices with the highest performance characteristics and leading-edge I/O capabilities. Equipped with integrated clock-data recovery (CDR) at speeds up to 1.25 Gbps, True-LVDS(TM) differential I/O support, and up to 18 independent transmit and receive channels, Mercury PLDs are the only programmable logic devices that meet these rigorous demands.

"We are pleased to be working with Altera to give designers the tools they need to rapidly deploy custom StarFabric-based solutions," said Tracy Richardson, president of StarGen, Inc. "We evaluated PLDs from all major vendors for this effort, but only Mercury PLDs met our needs because of their superior clock data recovery offering and overall performance. By partnering with the leading programmable logic provider, we are continuing our commitment to develop the infrastructure for the widest possible deployment of StarFabric technology."

The combined efforts of StarGen and Altera will result in the availability of physical and link layer intellectual property (IP) cores, which will enable developers to create custom StarFabric-compatible interfaces with Mercury PLDs. StarGen will join the Altera Megafunction Partners Program (AMPP(SM)), adding to the growing list of IP cores available via the Altera IP MegaStore(TM) web site. Availability of these cores will allow system designers to expand their value-add and competitive advantage while leveraging off-the-shelf StarFabric silicon available from StarGen.

"Partnering with StarGen to offer Mercury PLD-based StarFabric-compatible IP cores demonstrates Altera's continued commitment to providing the industry with access to leading-edge solutions," said Craig Lytle, vice president of Altera's intellectual property business unit. "The combination of Altera's industry-leading PLDs and StarGen's innovative interconnect technology, StarFabric, results in clear benefits for the system developer community, including design flexibility, lower development costs, and rapid time-to-market."

About Mercury Devices

Mercury devices provide up to 18 channels of 1.25 Gbps CDR transceiver support for a maximum CDR bandwidth of 45 Gbps, up to 14,400 logic elements, and up to 114,000 RAM bits, in compact FineLine BGA(TM) packages. Their CDR transceivers enable support for high-speed serial backplane applications or for high data rate communication standards such as Gigabit Ethernet. For source-synchronous differential signaling, Mercury devices offer two solutions: True-LVDS for high-speed channels and dedicated serializer/deserializers, and Flexible-LVDS(TM) for a fully scalable, 100-channel flexible solution. Mercury devices also provide the ability to interface to advanced memories such as DDR SDRAMs, ZBT SRAMs, and QDR SRAMs. Mercury devices also feature a flexible quad-port RAM mode in the enhanced embedded system blocks (ESBs) to enable complex memory-intensive functions. For more information about Mercury devices, go to: http://www.altera.com/products/devices/mercury/mcy-index.html .

About the Altera Megafunction Partners Program (AMPP)

The Altera Megafunction Partners Program, established in August 1995, was created to bring the advantages of design reuse to users of Altera PLDs. The AMPP program is an alliance between Altera and developers of intellectual property (IP) cores that encourages megafunction development. Altera provides technical information and training to AMPP partners, who create and support IP cores targeted for Altera programmable logic devices. There are over 30 partners who offer over 100 megafunctions; customers may automatically request a free evaluation of any of these IP cores by visiting the Altera IP MegaStore at: http://www.altera.com/ipmegastore .

About StarGen

StarGen (www.stargen.com) is a fabless semiconductor company that has developed a new switch interconnect technology for the communication and embedded industries. Adopters of the technology include companies building carrier access and edge systems, media gateways, convergence switches, wireless basestations, storage area network (SAN) equipment, network attached storage (NAS) devices, media and image processing systems and other distributed multi-processing platforms. StarGen's technology will provide a dramatic increase in equipment performance, reliability, and Quality of Service while providing for the retention of existing standards-based hardware and software investment. Founded in February 1999, StarGen is funded by a group of prestigious venture capital companies including Morgenthaler Ventures, St. Paul Venture Capital, Commonwealth Capital Ventures, and Bessemer Venture Partners. StarGen is headquartered in Marlborough, Massachusetts.

About Altera

Altera Corporation, The Programmable Solutions Company®, was founded in 1983 and is a leading supplier of programmable logic devices (PLDs). Altera's CMOS-based PLDs are user-programmable semiconductor chips that enhance flexibility and reduce time-to-market for companies in the communications, computer peripheral, and industrial markets. By using high performance devices, software development tools, and sophisticated intellectual property cores, system-on-a-programmable-chip (SOPC) solutions can be created with embedded processors, memory, and other complex logic together on a single PLD. Altera common stock is traded on The Nasdaq Stock Market under the symbol ALTR. More information on Altera is available on the Internet at http://www.altera.com .

NOTE: Altera, The Programmable Solutions Company, the stylized Altera logo, specific device designations and all other words that are identified as trademarks and/or service marks are, unless noted otherwise, the trademarks and service marks of Altera Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. All other product or service names are the property of their respective holders.