Altera Reveals Plans for 2004 Product Lineup

San Jose, Calif., September 15, 2003 - Altera Corporation (NASDAQ: ALTR) today revealed its plans for the company’s next-generation of innovative programmable technologies.  Building on 20 years of innovation and the highly successful Stratix™, Cyclone™, MAX®, HardCopy™, and Nios® product families, the new products will deliver increased performance, density, and value to system designers across a wide range of market segments.  Leveraging significant customer input in all phases of the product planning process, each new product will strengthen the penetration of programmable logic into new markets and applications.  Altera will also present this product roadmap at its SOPC World Conferences to be held around the world later this month.

“With the electronics industry increasingly turning to programmable logic for a competitive edge, Altera continues to innovate and deliver ground-breaking programmable technologies.  Our products are designed to meet tomorrow’s cost, performance, integration, and time-to-market needs,” said Erik Cleage, senior vice president of marketing at Altera.  “We are the first vendor to deliver to customers production-grade FPGAs on the 0.13-micron process as a result of stellar engineering execution and a tightly-aligned partnership with TSMC.  We intend to continue our track record of execution excellence with new 90-nanometer (nm) device families while building on our industry leadership in the CPLD and embedded processor markets.”

Altera will discuss its product introductions for 2004 at its SOPC World events to be held throughout North America, Europe, Japan, and Asia starting Sept. 30.  Attendees will learn about the following products:

• Stratix II Devices: Altera’s next-generation Stratix device family is being built on a new logic architecture optimized for the 90-nm process.  Developed with input from hundreds of customers, this new device family will provide designers with nearly twice the density and a 50 percent performance increase on average.
• Cyclone II Devices: Built from the ground up for low cost, Altera’s next-generation Cyclone device family is being architected specifically for the 90-nm process.  This family will extend the density range of our low-cost offering, with a market-driven blend of performance and features.
• MAX II Devices: Building on a decade of CPLD market and technology leadership, Altera will introduce a new CPLD device family in 2004.  The MAX II device family will be half the cost, consume 90 percent less power, and benefit from a 50 percent performance increase on average over existing CPLD families.
• Nios II Embedded Processor: With more than 10,000 hardware development kits sold, Altera’s Nios embedded processor is the world’s most widely adopted soft embedded processor.  The Nios II embedded processor will offer up to a 4x improvement in price/performance as compared to Altera’s first-generation Nios processor.
• Quartus® II Version 4.0 Design Software: Altera’s Quartus II design software is being significantly upgraded to improve overall ease-of-use while also providing powerful capabilities for designers of complex systems who require finer control of the software.  The latest version of Altera’s Quartus II design software includes new features such as incremental place-and-route, new verification technologies, and enhanced power estimation.

For more information on Altera’s product roadmap, please visit www.altera.com/roadmap.

About SOPC World
Altera’s third annual SOPC World conferences will be held in 24 cities around the globe and will focus on the product roadmap for 2004 and specific applications for Altera’s newest FPGAs including the high-performance Stratix, transceiver-based Stratix GX, and low-cost Cyclone devices.  For complete program information and to register now, visit www.altera.com/sopcworld.

About Altera
Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, 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 such as “expected” or “intend” 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.

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