Altera's New $150 Cyclone II Starter Kit Enables Quick and Easy Low-Cost FPGA Design

San Jose, Calif., October 24, 2006—FPGA design just got easier with the introduction of the new low-cost Cyclone® II FPGA Starter Kit from Altera Corporation (NASDAQ: ALTR). Priced to attract a wide range of FPGA users, including designers with no previous FPGA experience, the new kit features the industry’s lowest cost FPGA device family, Cyclone II. The low price kit—only US$150 list price—provides design engineers with a rich set of hardware and software resources to enable the development of FPGA-based systems that target high-volume, cost-sensitive applications.

This comprehensive kit is an easy and economical introduction to FPGAs, ideal for designers new to the technology. The Cyclone II FPGA Starter Kit gives design engineers instant access to the low-cost and time-to-market benefits of the Cyclone II family. Built on TSMC’s 90-nm process node, Cyclone II FPGAs deliver the highest performance and lowest power in comparison to competing low-cost FPGAs.

The low-cost kit contains the resources a design engineer needs to create and implement a design with ease, including development software, reference designs, cables and programming hardware. The Cyclone II FPGA Starter Kit ships with Altera’s Quartus® II Web Edition design software, enabling the highest levels of productivity and the fastest path to design completion. The kit also includes the Nios® II embedded processor for embedded design development as well as demos and reference designs.

"The new Cyclone II Starter Kit gives designers the tools and support needed to explore the features of the industry’s lowest cost FPGAs while quickly and easily developing their designs," said Luanne Schirrmeister, Altera’s product marketing director for low-cost FPGAs. "This kit provides design engineers with an ideal and easy-to-use platform for developing high-volume, cost-sensitive applications in markets such as automotive, consumer, communications and video processing."

Pricing and Availability

The Cyclone II Starter Kit (www.altera.com/products/devkits/altera/kit-cyc2-2C20N.html) is currently available for ordering through the Altera® online store at www.altera.com/buy/devkits/buy-devkits.html and through authorized Altera distributors for US$150. More information regarding Altera’s development kits is available at www.altera.com/products/devkits/kit-dev_platforms.jsp.

About Altera

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.