Altera outlined plans for a handful of next generation products, including FPGAs manufactured on TSMC's 90-nm process – Stratix II and Cyclone II -- and the next in its CPLD family, MAX II.

Altera's Stratix II device family will offer over 140,000 logic elements and provide designers with a 50 percent performance improvement on average and allow porting of intellectual property, the San Jose, Calif.-based company said in a statement. Customers using the highest density Stratix II devices will experience cost reductions of close to 50 percent compared with the equivalent density first-generation Stratix FPGAs, the company said.

"It became evident very early that 90-nm technology would not follow the historical trend of bringing easy gains in performance, density, and power consumption," said Erik Cleage, senior vice president of marketing at Altera, in a statement. "Our early research showed that simply porting an existing architecture to the 90-nm process would produce sub-optimal results. Consequently, Stratix II devices will feature a new logic fabric specifically designed for the process."

Altera also plans to take its lower cost Cyclone offering to 90 nm. The company said that Cyclone II devices will extend the density range of the first generation of Cyclone.

Altera's MAX II devices will debut in the first half of 2004 and feature devices from 128 to more than 1,000 macrocells, the company said in a statement. Altera said it will offer Max II devices at ahalf the cost, 90 percent lower power consumption, and a 50 percent performance increase on average over existing CPLD families.

Altera will reveal more details during its series of SOPC events beginning Sept. 30 near Dallas.

By: DocMemory
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