Actel Supports Synopsys' Latest Synthesis Direction; User to Benefit From Increased FPGA Synthesis Choices.

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 3, 1996--Actel Corporation (NASDAQ:ACTL) today threw its support behind the development of more sophisticated PC-based synthesis tools and categorized Synopsys' announcement of FPGA Express as a definitive step in the right direction.

"As a company that provides logic designers with high performance, high complexity field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), we have consistently espoused the need for easier to use synthesis tools. We have seen an exponential increase in synthesis-based designs over the past year and believe tools like FPGA Express will enhance this industry trend," said Robert Nalesnik, Director, Product Marketing for Actel.

Over the past three months, Actel has introduced two new additions to its 3200DX family the 14,000 gate 32140, the 20,000 gate 32200 and the industry's first zero wait state PCI-compliant FPGA family, ACT 3 PCI.

"All three of these introductions have opened new options to designers who are looking for more speed and device density. We believe that as gate counts increase, designers will ultimately find that synthesis is the ideal option for meeting design objectives within shrinking project windows," commented Gervais Fong, Actel Product Marketing Manager.

While FPGA Express is Synopsys' most recent advance to improve customer productivity, Actel is also supporting this initiative by delivering constraint driven place and route through its DirectTime tool and spreadsheet interface that is an integral part of the Designer Series development system. With a similar interface, designers can influence results using timing constraints passed from FPGA Express to the Designer Series Tool. Understanding and using timing requirements throughout the design process significantly improves the quality of results and reduces design time.

About Actel

Actel Corporation is dedicated to providing logic designers the capability and confidence to move up to higher complexity designs. Actel is the world's leading manufacturer of antifuse-based field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and associated software development tools. Actel's cost-effective, anti-fuse architecture offers designers advantages in total system performance, gate utilization and high level design efficiencies, all resulting in lower development costs and faster time to market. FPGAs are used in voice and data communications, computing, medical, industrial controls and military and aerospace applications worldwide. Actel is traded on the NASDAQ market using the symbol ACTL and is located at 955 East Arques Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94086. Telephone: [phone]. Internet: http://www.actel.com.

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