Actel's Industry-Leading Space-Flight FPGAs Now Available from UMC Wafer Foundry

Foundry Provides Alternate Source for Well Established Radiation-Tolerant FPGAs; Actel Also Announces Improvements to High-Reliability Device Family

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., June 21, 2004 - Actel Corporation (Nasdaq: ACTL) today announced that its radiation-tolerant RTSX-S family of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) is now available from UMC's wafer foundry. With the new family, called RTSX-SU, Actel now provides customers with an alternate source for its 0.25-micron devices, which have been widely adopted for radiation-intensive space-flight applications. To ensure the newly available devices meet the requirements of space-flight systems, the RTSX-SU devices from UMC passed a number of stringent qualification, reliability and radiation tests. In addition, Actel also announced that the RTSX-SU FPGA devices have been improved to reduce ICCI in-rush current, resulting in easier system design.

"UMC is the high-volume fab producing our SX-A and eX commercial FPGAs. We've worked closely with them to maintain tight control of process parameters to ensure that our customers receive the highest levels of reliability," said Ken O'Neill, director, military and aerospace product marketing at Actel. "Our tests on the UMC SX-A, eX, and now RTSX-SU silicon have demonstrated that the UMC antifuse devices are extremely reliable."

The UMC RTSX-SU devices are pin-compatible to the RTSX-S devices available from MEC. Software to support the UMC RTSX-SU FPGAs is also available.

About the RTSX-SU Family

The antifuse-based RTSX-SU family includes the 32,000 gate RTSX32SU and the 72,000 gate RTSX72SU (16,000 and 36,000 ASIC gates respectively) and offers system performance in excess of 250 MHz. Actel's RTSX-SU family is built on a foundation of hardened latches, which eliminates the need for triple-module redundancy (TMR). Traditional FPGAs, which do not use hardened latches, force the user to implement TMR using software or a large portion of the device's programmable logic.

Pricing and Availability

The RTSX-SU devices from UMC are available for shipment today. Pricing for the family starts at $3,300 each in 25-unit quantities. For further information about pricing and availability, please contact Actel.

About Actel

Actel Corporation is a supplier of innovative programmable logic solutions, including field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) based on antifuse and flash technologies, high-performance intellectual property (IP) cores, software development tools and design services, targeted for the high-speed communications, application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) replacement and radiation-tolerant markets. Founded in 1985, Actel employs more than 500 people worldwide. The Company is traded on the Nasdaq National Market under the symbol ACTL and is headquartered at 2061 Stierlin Court, Mountain View, CA, 94043-4655. Telephone: 888-99-ACTEL (992-2835). Internet: http://www.actel.com.

Editor's Note: The Actel name and logo are registered trademarks of Actel Corporation. All other trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective owners.

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