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Home > Corporate > About Us > Technology Milestones Print This Page Subscribe to Email Technology Milestones Altera was founded in 1983 by Robert Hartmann, Michael Magranet, Paul Newhagen, and Jim Sansbury, visionaries who capitalized on the research of the day, stating that semiconductor customers would benefit from a user-programmable standard product alternative to gate arrays. To address these market needs,  Altera's founders pioneered the first programmable logic device (PLD), the EP300, giving birth to an entirely new market segment in semiconductors. This new, flexible solution beat traditional standard products to market and launched Altera's reputation as a semiconductor innovation leader. 1983 1984 1985 1988 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Table 1 lists major industry innovations in Altera® programmable solutions. Table 1.  PLD Industry Innovation Firsts Year Technology Milestones PLD Industry Innovation Firsts 2007 ArriaTM GX FPGAs Industry's first midrange, protocol-optimized, transceiver-based FPGAs 2007 Cyclone® III FPGAs Industry's first low-cost 65-nm FPGA featuring an unprecedented combination of low power, high functionality, and low cost 2006 Stratix® III FPGAs 65-nm FPGAs featuring support for increased levels of integration and complexity with higher densities and performance 2006 Quartus® II software Native support for SDC design constraints 2006 C2H compiler First automated ANSI C to register transfer level (RTL) generation tool for embedded processor 2006 Stratix II GX FPGAs Fastest and highest-density 90-nm FPGA fabric with up to 20 low-power transceivers that operate between 622 Mbps to 6.375 Gbps 2005 HardCopy® II structured ASICs Fine-grained architecture; seamless migration from the 90-nm Stratix II FGPA prototype 2005 Cyclone II FPGAs 90-nm FPGAS featuring 30 percent lower cost and three times the density of the industry’s first low-cost FPGA 2004 Stratix II FPGAs 90-nm FPGAs in which 8-input "fracturable" look-up table (LUT) called an ALM replaced the 4-input LUT architecture 2003 Quartus II software Programmable logic software package offers Tcl scripting support 2003 Stratix GX FPGAs .13 µm FPGAs with quad transceiver architecture 2003 HardCopy structured ASICs Industry’s only complete prototype-to-volume production .13 µm solution 2003 Stratix FPGAs .13 µm, 300 mm, high-speed, high-density FPGAs 2002 Quartus II software Programmable logic design toolset offers Linux support 2002 Cyclone FPGAs World's lowest-cost FPGA (.13 µm) 2002 SOPC Builder First FPGA automated system generation tool 2002 Stratix FPGAs World's first FPGA with embedded DSP blocks 2001 HardCopy APEXTM structured ASICs The first seamless FPGA migration to low-cost structured ASIC 2001 System interconnect fabric First automatically generated interconnect fabric that supports simultaneous master/slave transactions 2001 Quartus II software Quartus II design software introduced 2001 MercuryTM FPGAs World's first .18 µm FPGA with embedded transceivers 2000 ARM®-based ExcaliburTM devices World's first FPGA with hard embedded processor 2000 Nios® embedded processors World's first embedded processor optimized for programmable logic 1999 Intellectual property (IP) Altera's IP MegaStoreTM website launched 1999 APEX EP20K1500E FPGAs Industry's first PLD with more than 1.5 million gates 1999 Quartus software Embedded logic analyzer (SignalTap®) 1998 Quartus software Support for encrypted IP cores 1997 Quartus software Graphical user interface to configure parameterized modules and IP cores (MegaWizard®) 1996 FLEX 10K® FPGAs FPGA with integrated phase-locked loop (PLL) 1995 FLEX 10K FPGAs FPGA with embedded block RAM 1994 MAX® 9000 CPLDs JTAG in-system reprogrammable CPLD 1993 Quartus software Support for library of parameterized modules (LPM) 1992 FLEX® 8000 FPGAs Altera's first field programmable gate array (FPGA) 1991 MAX+PLUS® II software Windows-based logic design toolset 1988 MAX+PLUS II software Full-featured integrated graphical CAD environment for logic design 1988 MAX 5000 CPLDs World's first high-density complex programmable logic device (CPLD). Patented redundancy technology delivers reduction of defects and increased yields (first introduced in .65 µm, this key technology continues to deliver increased yields in Altera 65-nm devices today.) 1985 EP1200 Industry's first high-density CMOS PLD 1984 A+PLUS software Industry's first PC-based development system 1984 EP300 device and die World's first programmable logic device (PLD) 1983 Demonstration box Altera's first demonstration box, "T-bird Tail Lights" 1983 - Altera Corporation founded Rate This Page

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