Altera Announces Bridgeable POS-PHY Solutions from 155Mbps to 10Gbps.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 26, 2001

Altera Corporation (Nasdaq:ALTR) today announced the availability of the POS-PHY Level 4 MegaCore(R) logic function with Altera's Atlantic(TM) on-chip interface. Optimized for Altera's APEX(TM) II devices, the POS-PHY Level 4 interface is a 10 Gbps chip-to-chip interface for next-generation Packet-over-SONET (POS) Internet traffic, Ethernet, as well as ATM applications.

"We are excited about Altera's latest announcement which adds POS-PHY Level 4 to their existing Level 2 and Level 3 cores," said Steve Perna, vice president and general manager of PMC-Sierra's Optical Networking Division. "This will expedite designers' time-to-market with link layer solutions that are compatible with our XENON(TM) family of OC-192 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet POS-PHY Level 4 devices."

"Our efforts with PMC-Sierra are clearly focused on providing our mutual customers with communications solutions that enable fast time-to-market," said Craig Lytle, vice president of the intellectual property business unit at Altera. "The results of our partnership provide communications designers with powerful solutions for their system-level design challenges."

About the Atlantic Interface

Altera's Atlantic interface is a scalable, high-speed on-chip interface for packet and cell transfer. Optimized for programmable logic devices, the Atlantic interface allows designers to quickly and easily build bridges between incompatible devices, as well as facilitate the user's integration of intellectual property (IP) with a simple, clearly defined, and supported interface.

The Atlantic interface is designed as a datapath bus for packet transfer between communications IP. Defined with minimal overhead, the Atlantic interface utilizes approximately 10 control signals in addition to a variable width data bus, and an optional address bus. The control signals include parity, start-of-packet, end-of-packet, error, empty, enable or data valid or data available signals. The Atlantic interface utilizes a simple four-way handshake as flow control and is scalable all the way up to 40Gb/s and beyond.

The Atlantic functional specification is an open standard available on the Altera web site and is supported by the Altera Megafunction Partners Program (AMPP(SM)). http://www.altera.com/literature/fs/fs_atlantic.pdf.

About Altera

Altera Corporation, The Programmable Solutions Company(R), was founded in 1983 and is a leading supplier of programmable logic devices (PLDs). Altera's CMOS-based PLDs are user-programmable semiconductor chips that enhance flexibility and reduce time-to-market for companies in the communications, computer peripheral, and industrial markets. By using high performance devices, software development tools, and sophisticated intellectual property cores, system-on-a-programmable-chip (SOPC) solutions can be created with embedded processors, memory, and other complex logic together on a single PLD. Altera common stock is traded on The Nasdaq Stock Market under the symbol ALTR. More information on Altera is available on the Internet at http://www.altera.com.

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 holders.