Altera Customers Gain Performance, Power and Signal Integrity Advantages From Stratix II GX FPGAs

Fully Functional Multigigabit Devices Are Now in Customer Systems

San Jose, Calif., July 13, 2006— Altera Corporation (NASDAQ:ALTR) today announced that a broad base of wireline, wireless, computing, networking, military and medical applications developers have verified operation of Stratix^® II GX FPGAs in their systems.These Altera^® devices allow customers to leverage reliable multigigabit transceiver performance, power and signal integrity. On-time delivery of fully functional Stratix II GX devices is proof of Altera’s commitment to meeting customers’ quality and reliability expectations.

 “Customers are finding that the low power, available multigigabit serial interconnect speeds and exceptional jitter characteristics provided by Stratix II GX FPGAs give them a compelling competitive advantage,” said David Greenfield, Altera’s senior director of product marketing for high-end FPGAs. “Seeing these high-performance 90-nm FPGAs with embedded transceivers shipping as scheduled and meeting power, jitter, line coding and run-length specifications as promised has been a breath of fresh air for designers integrating multigigabit transceivers into their systems.”

Stefan Pflaum, head of research and development, Computed Tomography, at SIEMENS AG, said, “One significant factor in our selection of Stratix II GX FPGAs for our products was Altera’s solid operational track record of delivering functional devices on time and as promised. Stratix II GX devices provide data rates of over 4 Gbps per channel in our systems, enabling our products to shorten image-generation time without compromising diagnostic detail, and helping us to maintain our worldwide leadership in medical imaging.”

“Altera’s delivery of fully functional, errata-free Stratix II GX silicon has been instrumental to the timely development of our networking traffic accelerator products,” said Haim Bar-David, CTO of Tehuti Networks. “The Stratix II GX solution provides many advantages that make it the only viable option for implementing FPGA-based PCI Express x8 interfaces at 2.5 Gbps. These advantages include the lowest transceiver power consumption, support for hot-socketing and requirements for fewer support components resulting in less board area.”

Mike Dini, president of The Dini Group, said, “As the only multichannel, high-density, transceiver-based FPGA capable of reliable operation over 3.3 Gbps, Altera’s Stratix II GX FPGAs enable us to deliver the most advanced programmable logic technology and the highest serial link speeds to our customers in the smallest effective footprint. Stratix II GX FPGAs exhibit a very clean eye diagram at 6.25 Gbps on our newly announced DNMEG_S2GX circuit board, verifying their excellent signal integrity and underscoring Altera’s commitment to producing and delivering bug-free products that perform as claimed. Following our first-pass success in producing the DNMEG_S2GX board, we plan to incorporate Stratix II GX FPGAs in all of our subsequent ASIC-prototyping product designs to provide both high-density programmability and multigigabit transceiver-based connectivity.”

Many other customers in a variety of industries, including Crossbeam Systems, Doremi Labs, Lockheed, and Parsec, among others, are currently validating Stratix II GX FPGAs in their products. Stratix II GX devices are supported by a full set of development tools, evaluation boards, complete protocol solutions, simulation models and characterization reports.

For more information on Stratix II GX FPGAs, visit www.altera.com/stratix2gx.

Altera’s programmable solutions enable system and semiconductor companies to rapidly and cost-effectively innovate, differentiate and win in their markets. Find out more at www.altera.com.