Using the hard PCIe Gen3 block of the Stratix V GX FPGA,
Convenient development of PCIe Gen3 systems

HONG KONG, Dec. 13, 2011 — Altera (NASDAQ: ALTR) announced that its 28 nm Stratix® V GX FPGAs have achieved interoperability with PLX® Technology’s (NASDAQ: PLXT) ExpressLane™ PCI Express® (PCIe®) Gen3 switches. Stratix V GX FPGAs offer hard PCIe Gen3 IP blocks and are the only FPGAs currently shipping that can interoperate with PCIe Gen3 switches.
“By enabling interoperability of the industry’s highest-performance 28 nm FPGAs with the industry’s first PCIe Gen3 switch, customers can significantly accelerate development time by freeing up time to focus on other design challenges rather than worrying about verifying electrical compatibility between devices,” said Patrick Dorsey, senior director of device marketing at Altera. “In addition to conserving logic resources, the hard PCIe Gen3 IP block in Stratix V also improves throughput and reduces power consumption for high-performance, leading-edge applications.”
Stratix V FPGAs offer up to four hard PCIe Gen3 x8 IP blocks. The PCIe Gen3 IP blocks support x1, x2, x4, and x8 lane configurations and provide up to 8 Gbps of transfer speed per lane, enabling up to 2x higher throughput using Gen3 x8 lanes compared to previous Gen2 x8 versions. Delivering hard PCIe IP blocks in Stratix V FPGAs saves more than 100,000 logic elements compared to soft implementations. The hard PCIe Gen3 IP block provides a PCIe protocol stack to the FPGA, including the transceiver module, physical layer, data link layer, and transaction layer. The PCIe Gen3 IP in Stratix V FPGAs is compliant with PCIe Base Specification Rev. 3.0, 2.x, and 1.x.
“The interoperability of Stratix V GX FPGAs with PLX PCIe Gen3 switches is a significant milestone in building the ecosystem, and we are excited to see a leading company like Altera developing Gen3 products,” said David Raun, vice president of marketing and business development at PLX. “As the first company to develop PCIe Gen3 silicon in 2010 and the only company to offer production-ready Gen3 switches today, PLX is well-positioned to support this rapidly expanding market.”
PCIe Gen3 is the latest version of the industry’s most widely deployed high-speed interconnect technology, and PLX’s switch products combine value-added innovations with high port counts to enable new, more powerful designs for server, storage and communications platforms. PLX’s Gen3 portfolio includes 11 devices ranging from 12 to 48 lanes and up to 18 ports, with more configurations in development. All devices are available now from PLX.

Altera's 28nm Device Portfolio – Meeting Diverse Customer Needs
Altera's 28nm FPGA products offer the industry's most comprehensive range of devices to meet customers' diverse design needs. The product portfolio includes Arria® V, Cyclone® V, Stratix V FPGAs, and HardCopy® V ASICs, providing customers with differentiated solutions. These products build on investments in process technology, architecture, transceiver technology, and hard intellectual property (IP) blocks to provide designers with products that enable them to meet their cost, performance, and low-power needs with minimal time and effort. More information about Altera's 28nm products can be found at www.altera.com/28nmportfolio .

Pricing and Availability
Stratix V FPGAs are shipping now. These high-performance 28nm devices include 14.1Gbps transceivers, embedded HardCopy blocks, and variable-precision DSP blocks, making them ideal for customers who require maximum performance and the latest technologies. For more information on PCIe technology, visit http://www.altera.com/technology/high_speed/protocols/pcie-hard-ip/pro-hard-ip.html . For more information on Stratix V FPGAs, visit www.altera.com/stratix5 . For pricing, contact your distributor (UniQuest 031-776-9888).