Altera shipping world's biggest FPGA

Altera delivered the industry’s first high-density FPGAs built using the 90-nm process with high-performance, low-k dielectric materials. Benchmarks using a methodology endorsed by industry experts demonstrate that the Stratix II family is on average 39 percent faster than Xilinx’s Virtex-4 devices, the nearest competitive FPGA family. “The high density and superior performance of the Stratix II family make it the best programmable logic choice for today’s complex system designs,” said David Greenfield, senior director of marketing for high-density FPGA products at Altera Corporation. “The EP2S130 device will enable Altera to expand its market and, in combination with the HardCopy® product family, displace ASICs in high-density, high-performance applications.” “We require the highest level of integration for the development of our wireless digital transmission products,” said Dinesh Venkatachalam, vice president of engineering at Legend Silicon. “Altera’s Stratix II family includes the largest FPGAs available in the market, and the family architecture offers an excellent mix of DSP and memory resources. We look forward to leveraging these benefits using the EP2S130 devices we have received.” With the introduction of the EP2S130 FPGAs, two members of the Stratix II family are shipping, including EP2S60 devices which began shipping in June. The largest Stratix II device, the EP2S180 device, will ship in Q1 2005. All members of the Stratix II family will be in full production in the first half of 2005.