Actel Delivers Fully Qualified High-Speed, Low-Power Axcelerator Devices

Nonvolatile Solutions Provide Design Security Benefits and Immunity to Firm Errors

SUNNYVALE, Calif., May 12, 2003 - Actel Corporation (Nasdaq: ACTL) today announced the production qualification of its AX1000, AX500, AX250 and AX125 field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), the first four members of the company's high-performance Axcelerator family. Built upon the company's AX architecture, the family delivers better than 500 MHz internal operation and up to 100 percent resource utilization. Additionally, the company's live at power-up Axcelerator FPGAs avoid in-rush current spikes, simplify system power supply design and generally enable Actel to offer lower standby and dynamic power consumption than competing solutions. Other benefits of Actel's Axcelerator FPGAs include immunity to firm errors and superior design security. The company also announced the availability of a PCI-X intellectual property (IP) core and evaluation board optimized for Axcelerator FPGAs (see today's release titled, "Actel Announces PCI-X Intellectual Property Core for Axcelerator FPGAs").

"We have seen an overwhelming response to our Axcelerator family since its introduction, clear evidence of the advantages these FPGAs offer the marketplace," said Jon Ewald, director of product marketing at Actel. "With the qualification of the AX1000, AX500, AX250 and AX125 devices and the Axcelerator-optimized CorePCIX IP block, designers have access to industry-leading FPGA solutions that not only satisfy their performance and power requirements, but also deliver the additional benefits of unsurpassed design security and immunity to costly firm errors."

Firm errors occur when high-energy neutrons generated in the upper atmosphere strike the configuration cell of an SRAM FPGA. The energy of the collision can change the state of the configuration cell and thus change the logic and/or routing of the FPGA in an unpredictable and uncontrollable way. As a result, these errors are impossible to prevent when using SRAM FPGAs, costly to detect and could result in system failure. Because the configuration element of Axcelerator FPGAs, the antifuse, cannot be altered once programmed, firm errors are nonexistent.

Actel's nonvolatile Axcelerator devices offer levels of design security beyond SRAM-based FPGAs and conventional application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) solutions. Further, the combination of Actel's secure FuseLock programming technology and the lack of an external bitstream enables designers to safeguard against common security problems faced by designers using conventional SRAM devices, including overbuilding, cloning, reverse engineering and denial of service.

Pricing and Availability
Fully qualified AX1000, AX500, AX250 and AX125 devices are available now in production quantities with prices beginning below $10 in 100K quantities. The remaining member of the family, the AX2000 which offers 2-million system gates, is sampling and expected to be qualified in Q3 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 955 East Arques Avenue, Sunnyvale, Calif., 94086-4533. Telephone: 888-99-ACTEL (992-2835). Internet: http://www.actel.com.

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