Altera Demonstrates 90-nm Leadership as New Low-Cost Cyclone II FPGAs Begin Shipping Early

San Jose, Calif., January 21, 2005—Altera Corporation (NASDAQ: ALTR) today announced that the first member of the new Cyclone^™ II family, the EP2C35, is shipping ahead of schedule, reinforcing its position as the low-cost and 90-nm FPGA leader. With up to 68K logic elements (LEs) at a cost of $0.66 cents per thousand, Cyclone II devices are the industry’s lowest-cost FPGAs and the largest density in their class. Following the successful rollout of its high-density, 90-nm Stratix^® II family, Altera continues to demonstrate operational excellence in delivering 90-nm products with the Cyclone II family.

“The Cyclone II device is the only product in the market that offers the right density, performance, features, and cost structure for our next-generation media storage product, the MediaVault-FC4/12,” said Mike Anderson, Huge Systems’ chief technology officer. “We evaluated the alternatives carefully, and the Cyclone II family clearly offers the best solution. By delivering the benefits of PLD flexibility at ASIC prices, the Cyclone II family has moved programmable logic to a new level.”

Cyclone II devices build on the momentum generated by the highly successful first-generation Cyclone family. The Cyclone II family offers more than three times the density with up to 68K logic elements of its predecessor and has new features, including up to 150 18x18 embedded multipliers for high-performance digital signal processing (DSP) functions and up to 1.1 Mbits of on-chip memory. Also, Cyclone II devices support Altera’s 32-bit Nios^® II soft embedded processor. A Nios II processor implemented in Cyclone II devices consumes as little as $0.35 of logic, making it the lowest-cost 32-bit processor on the market.

“Particularly in high-volume applications, meeting shipping deadlines is critical to a product’s success,” said Steve Mensor, Altera’s senior director of product marketing. “By delivering the Cyclone II family ahead of schedule, Altera is enabling customers to implement designs using the most cost-effective FPGAs in the industry.”

>Device Availability
The Cyclone II family has been supported in the Quartus^® II version 4.1 software and later, since June 2004. The EP2C35 device is the first member of the Cyclone II family that is available. Volume pricing for EP2C35 devices is $22 for volumes of 250,000 units. The remaining five members of the family will start shipping in the next two quarters. For more information about Cyclone II FPGAs, please visit www.altera.com/cyclone2.> <>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.>

Safe Harbor
This press release contains "forward-looking statements" that are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are generally preceded by words that imply a future state or that imply that a particular future event or events will occur such as "will". Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements in this release involve risks and uncertainty, including without limitation the risk that future performance is dependent on product development schedules, the design performance of software and other tools, as well as the company's and third parties' development technology and manufacture capabilities. Please refer to the company's Securities and Exchange Commission filings, copies of which are available from the company without charge.

###

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 holder.