Altera Speeds Time-to-Market and Improves Performance for Video and Image Processing Applications

New Intellectual Property Suite Helps Designers Overcome Cost, Performance, and Time-to-Market Issues of Traditional Solutions

San Jose, Calif., April 24, 2006 —Altera Corporation (NASDAQ:ALTR) today announced a comprehensive, high-performance FPGA solution for designers of video and image processing applications. Comprised of intellectual property (IP) cores, development kits, FPGAs and reference designs, the new offering addresses the need for increased processing bandwidth in video and image processing applications as video standards continue to advance and technologies evolve.

“Designers of broadcast video, video surveillance, video conferencing and medical imaging applications now have a scalable video and image processing solution for addressing their cost, performance and flexibility requirements while meeting their time-to-market goals,” said Steve Mensor, senior director of IP & Technology Marketing at Altera. “We are confident that we are offering a solution that addresses the evolving video and image processing market.”

Altera’s^® video and image processing technologies can be implemented as stand-alone FPGAs or as FPGA co-processors supporting DSP processors. In high definition (HD) applications, multiple stand-alone DSP processors may be required because a single DSP processor cannot efficiently perform compression algorithms. FPGAs also lower price-to-performance ratios by either acting as a coprocessor for the DSP processor or by replacing the DSP processor altogether. In addition, FPGAs provide advantages over ASSPs because they can be easily upgraded to support higher resolutions and new video standards.

Altera’s latest device families, including low-cost Cyclone^TM II FPGAs, high-density, high‑performance Stratix^® II FPGAs and HardCopy^® II structured ASICs, support the video and image processing solution. Key components of the solution include:

Nine configurable IP cores, including a deinterlacer, scaler, 2D filtering for smoothing and sharpening images, 2D median filtering for noise removal, and a color space converter.
A Video Development Kit, Cyclone II Edition with two composite standard definition inputs and a Cyclone II EP2C70 device for quickly testing and evaluating low-cost designs.
An Audio Video Development Kit, Stratix II GX Edition targeted for higher-end applications using the high-speed transceivers on the Stratix II GX device. The kit also features a wide array of input devices for standards including asynchronous serial interface (ASI), serial digital interface (SDI), digital video interface (DVI) and audio interfaces.
A comprehensive video reference design included in the development kits, which helps customers easily jump-start development efforts.

For more information about Altera’s video and image processing solution, visit www.altera.com/video_imaging.

Availability and Pricing

The video and image processing solution is available for ordering through Altera’s distribution channel and sales representatives. The Video and Image Processing IP Suite will be available in May and costs $995. The Video Development Kit, Cyclone II Edition is priced at $1,095 and the Audio Video Development Kit, Stratix II GX Edition is priced at $4,995. Both development kits will be available in July.

About Altera

Altera Corporation (NASDAQ:ALTR) is the world’s pioneer in system-on-a-programmable-chip (SOPC) solutions. Combining programmable logic technology with software tools, intellectual property and technical services, Altera provides high-value programmable solutions to over 14,000 customers worldwide. More information is available at www.altera.com.