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Altera announced the availability of the Cyclone III family of 65nm FPGAs. The FPGAs deliver 5K to 120K logic elements (LEs), up to 4 Mbits of memory and up to 288 digital signal processing (DSP) multipliers.

Application Software Defined Radio (SDR)

Cyclone III devices enable the integration of SDR waveforms in a single device for less than 0.5 W of static power. The Cyclone III family’s ability to deliver the necessary logic, memory, DSP multipliers and cost are unmatched in integrating these waveforms in a single device.

Application Wireless

Ample DSP capabilities of Cyclone III FPGAs allow designers to use the family in a broad range of wireless applications, such as digital IF and baseband functions in wireless pico base stations.

Application Video and Image Processing

Cyclone III FPGAs offer the right combination of DSP multipliers, memory and logic for video system I/O, video compression encoding, and video and image processing applications. In fact, customers can implement a full H.264 encoder for under $20 or implement high-definition (HD) scaling for under $5.

Application Displays

Cyclone III devices are optimized for display applications and meet all 1080p HDTV performance requirements. Altera built the Cyclone III family with display-specific I/O interface support (mini-LVDS, Reduced Swing Differential Signaling and Point-to-Point Differential Signaling), more outputs per phase-locked loop (PLL) compared to the previous generation and dynamically reconfigurable PLLs to support changing refresh rates. As a result, customers can design a single platform for a wide range of display sizes and resolutions for as little as $4. Customers can also use Cyclone III devices alongside existing ASIC/ASSP devices to improve picture quality and features.

Pricing and Availability

The Cyclone III EP3C25 is shipping now to customers, with production devices scheduled to be available starting in August 2007. All eight members of the Cyclone III family will be shipping in production by the end of 2007. Pricing is $4.00 for the EP3C5E144C8 for 500Ku.

Quartus II Design Software Version 7.0

Altera also introduced Quartus II software version 7.0 with support for the entire 65-nm Cyclone III FPGA family in both its Subscription Edition and free Web Edition. Both the Subscription Edition and the Web Edition of Quartus II software version 7.0 are now available. The Subscription Edition is shipping to all customers with an active software subscription. The free Quartus II Web Edition software can be downloaded online. Altera’s software subscription program simplifies the process of obtaining Altera design software by consolidating software products and maintenance charges into one annual subscription payment.

Subscribers receive Quartus II software, the ModelSim-Altera Edition and a full license to the IP Base Suite, which includes ten of Altera’s most popular intellectual property (DSP and memory) cores. The annual software subscription is $2,000 for a node-locked PC license. Quartus II design software supports major operating systems, including Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64, Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows 2000, UNIX (Solaris 8 and 9), Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 and 4.0, and SUSE Enterprise Linux 9.