For Release: October 10, 2001
Altera and TSMC Collaborate on HardCopySM Program
San Jose, Calif., October 10, 2001 -- Altera Corporation (Nasdaq: ALTR) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) today extended their long-standing partnership to include Altera's HardCopySM program, a seamless migration path from Altera's largest PLDs to a hard, masked version for low-cost, high-volume production. Altera's partnership with TSMC, which provides advanced process technology and wafer manufacturing of both Altera's high-density PLDs and their HardCopy counterparts ensures a rapid turn around for HardCopy prototypes. This allows Altera customers to not only to bring their end products to market faster using Altera PLDs, but also to accelerate the cost reduction process with the HardCopy device.
"Through Altera's relationship with TSMC, our customers can benefit from one-stop, PLD-to-HardCopy device shopping," said Denis Berlan, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Altera. "Altera and our customers can now take advantage of a high-quality, high-volume manufacturing source for both PLDs and HardCopy devices from the same world-class silicon foundry."
Intellectual property migration from an Altera PLD to its HardCopy counterpart is seamless, eliminating the hassles of additional licensing and re-qualification. Furthermore, the HardCopy device is based on TSMC's 0.18-micron CMOS process and is fully compliant with the stringent manufacturing requirements Altera has established for its industry-leading PLDs. Unlike traditional gate array conversion, which typically involves moving to an older-generation process, the HardCopy device utilizes the same state-of-the art process technology as their programmable counterparts. Using identical circuit structures including I/O buffers, phase locked loops and embedded system blocks, the HardCopy device meets the customers' critical timing requirements, doing away with the need for product re-qualification. TSMC's yield optimization work, combined with Altera's fine-tuning of the APEX™ device timing characteristics, are key elements to the successful migration from PLD to the HardCopy device.
"TSMC is seeing increasing demand for solutions such as Altera's HardCopy devices," said David Keller, vice president of business management at TSMC North America. "Altera has responded to this need, and TSMC has closely cooperated with Altera to develop a HardCopy program business model that will ensure quick turn-around for prototypes and a fast ramp-up to high-volume production."
Altera's HardCopy program supports the APEX20KE and APEX20KC devices, with plans to introduce additional products supporting the Excalibur™ embedded processor family and the high-density APEX II devices in 2002.
More information on Altera and Hard Copy devices is available at www.altera.com/hardcopy. A web cast replay of Altera President and CEO John Daane launching the Hard Copy program will be available at www.altera.com.
About TSMC
TSMC is the world's largest dedicated semiconductor foundry, providing the industry's leading process technology and the foundry industry's largest portfolio of process-proven library, IP, design tools, and reference flows. The company operates two advanced 300mm wafer fabs, seven eight-inch fabs and two six-inch wafer fabs. TSMC also has substantial capacity commitments at two joint ventures fabs (Vanguard and SSMC) and at its wholly-owned subsidiary, WaferTech. In early 2001, TSMC became the first IC manufacturer to announce a 0.10-micron technology alignment program with its customers. TSMC's corporate headquarters are in Hsin-Chu, Taiwan. For more information about TSMC please go to http://www.tsmc.com.
About Altera
Altera Corporation, The Programmable Solutions Company®, was founded in 1983 and is a leading supplier of programmable logic devices (PLDs). Altera's CMOS-based PLDs are user-programmable semiconductor chips that enhance flexibility and reduce time-to-market for companies in the communications, computer peripheral, and industrial markets. By using high performance devices, software development tools, and sophisticated intellectual property cores, system-on-a-programmable-chip (SOPC) solutions can be created with embedded processors, memory, and other complex logic together on a single PLD. Altera common stock is traded on
The Nasdaq Stock Market under the symbol ALTR. More information on Altera is available on the Internet at http://www.altera.com.
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