Altera's Quartus II software version 11.1,
Support for Arria V and Cyclone V FPGAs and enhanced productivity

Hong Kong, November 8, 2011 — Altera Corporation (Nasdaq: ALTR) today announced the release of version 11.1 of its Quartus® II software, design software that provides industry-leading performance and productivity for CPLD, FPGA, and HardCopy® ASIC designs. This latest software release provides extended support for Altera’s 28nm FPGAs, including compilation support for Arria® V and Cyclone® V FPGAs, and offers enhanced support for Stratix® V FPGAs. Quartus II software version 11.1 also includes additional support for System Console, Altera’s system-level debug tool.

System Console raises the level of abstraction for debugging and works with low-level debug tools, such as Altera’s SignalTap™ II embedded logic analyzer, to significantly reduce verification time.

Alex Grbic, Director of Software, DSP, and IP Marketing at Altera, said, “Support for Arria V and Cyclone V FPGAs enables designers to meet performance requirements while achieving the industry’s lowest power characteristics at 28nm and lower system costs across a variety of applications. With this new Quartus II software version, customers can use the latest features of system-level design tools to rapidly design, verify, and debug their 28nm designs.”

Quartus II software version 11.1 provides compilation support for Arria V FPGAs and Cyclone V FPGAs. Arria V FPGAs offer a balance of power, performance, and system cost for mid-range applications. Cyclone V FPGAs, as 28nm FPGAs, provide the lowest power and lowest system cost characteristics. This release also provides additional support for Altera's high-end 28nm Stratix V FPGAs, such as PCI Express® PCIe® Gen3 support and bitstream generation capabilities for DDR3/QDRII memory.

The configurable, interactive System Console tool included in Quartus II software version 11.1 meets various system debugging needs. Through the System Console, designers can analyze and interpret data and monitor system performance under real-world conditions. Because it is based on TCL, designers using the System Console can rapidly build verification scripts and custom graphical user interfaces in an advanced programming environment to support advanced measurement and verification solutions for Qsys systems.

Designed for design simulation, lab testing, and deployment phases, this tool requires minimal resources and improves designer productivity by reducing hardware compilation steps. Customers can watch an online demo of the System Console at www.altera.com/systemconsole .

The additional features of Quartus II software version 11.1 are as follows:
 Transceiver Toolkit—Quartus II software version 11.1 supports on-chip EyeQ signal quality monitoring for Stratix V FPGA transceivers, allowing users to analyze post-equalized transceiver eyes to achieve optimal signal quality and a lower BER.
 Qsys Enhancements—This release adds extended support for third-party simulation tools and also includes preliminary support for the ARM® AMBA® AXI™ protocol.
 SoC Design Environment—Quartus II software version 11.1 includes a preview of an integrated SoC design environment that uses hardware/software co-design capabilities with Altera's SoC FPGAs to accelerate the design process, enabling customers to maximize their productivity by using tools and development flows familiar to both processor and FPGA development.

For additional information on the features of Quartus II software version 11.1, please refer to the following:
www.altera.com/q2whatsnew .

Price and Supply Time
Both the subscription edition and the free web edition of Quartus II software version 11.1 are available for immediate download. Altera's software subscription program makes it easy to use Altera design software by consolidating software products and maintenance costs into an annual fee. Subscribers receive full licenses for Quartus II software, ModelSim-Altera Starter Edition, and the IP Base Suite, which includes 14 of Altera's most popular IP (DSP and memory) cores. The annual software subscription fee is $2,995 for a node-locked PC license and is available for purchase on Altera's eStore.