Actel Qualifies Axcelerator Devices for Industrial Temperature Operation

Antifuse-Based FPGAs Offer High-Performance and Reliability For Data Communications, Telecommunications and Industrial Control Applications

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., September 2, 2003 - Actel Corporation (Nasdaq: ACTL) today announced the availability of high-performance, nonvolatile field-programmable gate array (FPGA) devices qualified to industrial specifications. The new industrial-grade single-chip Axcelerator devices, which offer densities up to 2-million system gates, are now guaranteed to operate at ambient temperatures ranging from -40°C to +85°C. With these new solutions, Actel continues to deliver the industry's most robust line of industrial grade, live-at-power-up, low-power programmable solutions. This extended temperature range, coupled with unprecedented performance, design security and firm error protection capabilities, makes these new devices suitable for application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) alternative applications in data and telecommunication, networking, test and measurement, and industrial control.

"As FPGAs continue to increase in complexity, density and performance, they have become viable alternatives to ASICs in a variety of applications," said Jon Ewald, director of product marketing at Actel. "The availability of industrial-grade versions of the Axcelerator products underscores the robust and reliable nature of the devices and enables designers, particularly in the communications and industrial markets where extreme temperatures are the norm, to take advantage of the high-performance, low power consumption and design security features offered by the AX architecture."

About the Axcelerator Device Family

Built upon 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.

Pricing and Availability

Fully qualified AX1000, AX500, AX250 and AX125 devices are available now in production quantities with prices beginning at $19.40 in 100K quantities. The fully qualified AX2000 device, Actel's two million-gate offering, will be available in November 2003. For further information about pricing and availability, please contact Actel.

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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