Leading EDA Vendors Get on Board with MAX II Devices

Aldec, Altium, Cadence, Mentor Graphics, and Synplicity Deliver Design Flows Using Altera’s New Low-Cost, High-Performance MAX II Devices

San Jose, Calif., March 9, 2004— Altera Corporation (NASDAQ: ALTR) announced today that leading EDA vendors are providing complete support for the new MAX^® II device family, the industry’s lowest-cost CPLDs.  Altera has worked closely with its EDA partners to develop a complete front-to-back design and verification flow for MAX II devices.  MAX II devices deliver half the cost, one-tenth the power consumption, four times the density, and twice the performance of previous MAX devices.

“With this level of support from our EDA partners, MAX II designers can continue to use the system and board design environments of their choosing,” said Tim Southgate, Altera’s vice president of software and tools marketing.  “By providing a complete design flow, designers can immediately add MAX II devices to their system utilizing their existing design flow.”

Support from Leading EDA Vendors
“Aldec has worked closely with Altera to ensure that our mixed HDL verification products offer complete support for Altera’s new high-performance, low-cost MAX II device family,” said Dave Rinehart, director of marketing at Aldec.  “Both Active-HDL^™ and Riviera^™ are now available with complete support for Altera’s latest device family.”

“Programmable logic has become an integral part of today’s board-level designs,” said Nancy Eastman, president of Altium, Inc.  “By working closely with Altera, we are able to ensure that our Protel customers have complete board-level support for the latest programmable logic device families, including the new MAX II device family.”

“Cadence^® is committed to providing designers with complete board-level tool support to take full advantage of the latest programmable logic technology,” said Jamie Metcalfe, vice president of strategic marketing for the Silicon-Package-Board Business Unit, Cadence.  “Our new Allegro^Ò system interconnect design platform supports Altera’s new MAX II device family, providing our global customers with a comprehensive development platform that can help accelerate their time-to-market.”

“Mentor Graphics has added support for Altera’s new MAX II CPLDs, a key device family in Altera’s product portfolio that we feel is well-targeted at the high volume marketplace,” said Simon Bloch, general manager of Mentor Graphics FPGA Design Creation and Synthesis division.  “Mentor’s family of design and verification products, such as Precision^® Synthesis, LeonardoSpectrum Synthesis^®, FPGA Advantage^® and ModelSim^®, provide an easy-to-use, affordable, and highly productive design and verification environment for these new programmable logic devices.”

“We have a strong partnership with Altera, and through this we can ensure that our Synplify^® synthesis solutions take full advantage of Altera devices, such as the new MAX II device family,” said Jeff Garrison, director of FPGA products at Synplicity.  “We believe our Synplify synthesis solutions will enable MAX II device designers to quickly achieve their performance goals, while using the smallest, most cost-effective device possible.” 

Pricing and Availability
Altera’s MAX II device family is supported by Mentor Graphic’s Precision version 2003c update 1 and ModelSim version 5.7e.  It is also supported by Synplicity’s Synplify and Synplify Pro version 7.5.1, which will be available at the end of March.

Quartus II version 4.0 development software supports MAX II devices and is now available to all customers on active subscription.  The annual subscription for the Altera design software is $2,000 for a node-locked PC license, which includes full-featured Quartus II design software, OEM simulation tools from Mentor Graphics, and a full year of software upgrades.  New or existing customers may obtain a software subscription at the Programmable eStore on the Altera website, www.altera.com, or from Altera distributors worldwide.

About MAX II Devices
Altera’s MAX II devices are the industry’s lowest-cost CPLDs, targeted at general-purpose, low-density logic applications. Based on a groundbreaking implementation of a look-up table-based architecture for CPLDs, MAX II delivers half the cost, one-tenth the power, four times the density, and twice the performance of previous MAX devices.  Built on TSMC’s 0.18-micron flash-based process technology, the instant-on and non-volatile MAX II devices offer 240 to 2,210 logic elements (LEs), up to 272 user I/O pins, and innovative board-management features such as user flash memory. For more information on Altera’s MAX II device family, visit www.altera.com/max2.

About Altera
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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