Hong Kong, March 7, 2012 — Altera (NASDAQ: ALTR) announced that it has begun mass production of the industry's first high-performance 28nm FPGAs. The Stratix® V FPGAs are the only FPGA products manufactured using TSMC's 28HP process and achieve a speed class that is a cut above competitor solutions. These high-end FPGA devices from Altera not only deliver superior performance but also utilize advanced process technology and enhanced features to replace ASICs or ASSPs across various market segments, offering a more competitive solution compared to competitor FPGAs.
Altera began shipping engineering samples of the industry's first high-end 28nm FPGA in April 2011 and commenced mass production in less than a year, achieving the shortest timeframe for 28nm FPGA mass production in the industry. Altera also remains the only company supplying FPGA products featuring 28Gbps transceivers. Major global telecommunications, broadcasting, military, test, and medical equipment manufacturers, as well as customers seeking to develop systems with the highest possible performance, are selecting Altera's high-end FPGA products for their next-generation systems. This acknowledges the performance superiority and favorable mass production schedule of these devices.
As a major information and communication technology (ICT) solution company, companies like Huawei recognized the performance advantages provided by Stratix V FPGAs early on and have adopted Altera's high-end device products in their latest 400G high-capacity OTN systems. Huawei is showcasing such Stratix V FPGA-based systems at its booth at the “Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibition/National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference 2012 (OFC/NFOEC)” being held in Los Angeles for one week starting March 5. With Altera supplying the industry’s first high-end 28nm mass-produced FPGA devices, it has become possible to further enhance high-performance systems in communication infrastructure, such as 400G systems, and various other types of market sectors.
Mohammad Darwish, President and CEO of AdvancedIO Systems, stated, “Financial markets are constantly demanding higher performance with the lowest possible latency. AdvancedIO’s products, combined with Altera’s latest 28nm FPGA technology, provide the ideal solution to meet these demands. By adopting Altera’s Stratix V FPGAs for our network cards, we were able to produce the most reliable, error-free, and robust products on the market. The Stratix V family offers a comprehensive range of devices across various densities, providing new possibilities for implementing more sophisticated financial services using FPGA technology.”
Altera offers the industry's most diverse and comprehensive range of 28nm FPGA device products to meet customers' diverse system performance, system power, and system cost requirements. In addition to the Stratix V FPGA family, Altera's 28nm portfolio includes low-power/low-cost Cyclone® V and Cyclone V SoC FPGAs, mid-performance Arria® V and Arria V SoC FPGAs, and development kits. The Stratix V FPGA family includes several product series; the E series products provide rich logic resources, while the GX, GS, and GT series products provide transceivers operating at up to 28Gbps. The Stratix V FPGA is not only the only FPGA product that provides variable-precision DSP blocks and high-performance floating-point DSP capabilities, but also the only FPGA product that adopts hard PCI Express® (PCIe®) Gen3 x8 IP blocks and 28Gbps transceivers.
Vince Hu, Vice President of Product and Marketing at Altera, stated, “The mass production of our high-end 28nm silicon is starting at an exquisitely exciting time. This is because vendors are aggressively developing higher-performance systems or upgrading existing infrastructure to meet the rapidly changing demands of end users. By being the first in the industry to begin mass production of high-performance FPGAs, Altera is positioned to provide customers with a more advantageous role in differentiating their products and bringing end systems to market even faster. Our 28nm devices, customized to meet diverse requirements, are demonstrating their performance superiority by being adopted in two out of every three 28nm designs in the market. Our 28nm devices are also being adopted in applications that traditionally utilized ASSPs or ASICs, including optical networking, high-speed packet processing, and other communications applications.”

Product supply
We are currently supplying 28nm Stratix V FPGA production devices, and these devices are supported by the latest version of Quartus® II 11.1 software. Engineering samples of the 28nm Arria V FPGA are currently being shipped, and shipments of the 28nm Cyclone V FPGA will begin this month. For ordering information or pricing regarding Altera 28nm device products, please contact your local Altera sales office. Further details regarding the Stratix V FPGA can be found at www.altera.com/pr/stratix5 .