Altera Announces New Stratix DSP Development Kit

New Kit Provides a Complete Design Environment for FPGA-based Reconfigurable DSP Technology

San Jose, Calif., September 5, 2002—As an essential part of its Code:DSP initiative aimed at extending the reach of FPGAs for DSP applications, Altera Corporation (NASDAQ: ALTR) today introduced a new Stratix™ DSP development kit. Providing DSP engineers with a comprehensive platform for designing, prototyping, and debugging high-performance DSP systems, the kit includes a powerful development board, Altera's DSP Builder, Quartus® II design software, and several system reference designs, together giving customers the ability to start prototyping their DSP designs quickly and easily.

"Altera's APEX DSP development kit has provided us with a means to accelerate our development and to take our algorithm and move it into an FPGA without getting caught in a steep learning curve," said Ravi Hans, senior principal engineer, M/A-COM. "Altera's competition has been unable to deliver us a working development board despite their exaggerated claims. Altera not only provided us with a working DSP development board on time, but also with timely updates to the DSP software. We are now looking forward to working with the latest Stratix DSP development kit."

The Stratix DSP development kit features a development board with a Stratix EP1S25 device, two 12-bit 125-MHz A/D converters, two 14-bit 165-MHz D/A converters, and 32 Mbits of flash memory. One of the unique features of the Stratix DSP board is its digital I/O connectivity, which features four 40-pin connectors for Analog Devices' A/D converter boards and a separate connector for Texas Instruments' TMS320 cross-platform daughter card.

"The Stratix DSP development board has the right analog connectivity to plug into an existing design or test equipment in the lab," said Justin Cowling, director of intellectual property (IP) marketing at Altera. "Altera's unique OpenCore® Plus hardware evaluation solution enables users to try out DSP MegaCore® functions in hardware as well as within the Simulink simulation environment. The DSP development kit contains everything that a designer needs to start migrating Simulink designs into reconfigurable DSP products."

The kit also includes a 12-month license for DSP Builder and the Quartus II design software, a 30-day evaluation of MATLAB and Simulink from The MathWorks, and several system reference designs. One of the reference designs highlights the tight integration between Altera's DSP Builder and SOPC Builder software.

Pricing and Availability

The Stratix DSP development kit (ordering code: DSP-BOARD/S25) is available for order now. Priced at $1,995, the kits will ship in early Q4 2002. More information about this product can be obtained on Altera's web site at http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/altera/kit-dsp_stratix.html.

About Stratix Devices

Stratix devices are based on a 1.5-V, 0.13-µm, all-layer copper SRAM process, with densities ranging from 10,570 to 114,140 logic elements (LEs) and up to 10 Mbits of RAM. Stratix devices support various differential I/O electrical standards such as the LVDS, LVPECL, PCML and HyperTransport standards, as well as high-speed interfaces, including the UTOPIA IV, SPI-4 Phase 2, SFI-4, 10G Ethernet XSBI, RapidIO™, HyperTransport™ and other interfaces. More technical information about the Stratix device family is available at http://www.altera.com/stratix.

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 http://www.altera.com.

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