Altera and eCosCentric Announce eCosPro Support for Nios II Embedded Processor

SAN JOSE, USA -- July 9, 2007 -- Altera Corporation (NASDAQ: ALTR) and eCosCentric Limited, today announced the availability of the eCosPro^® real-time operating system (RTOS) for Altera's Nios^® II embedded processor, the world's most widely used configurable soft-core processor. The combination of Nios II and eCosPro meet the needs of a wide range of embedded applications including industrial automation, consumer appliances, telematics, communications, networking and digital imaging. Altera Nios II customers now have access to a complete eCosPro solution consisting of the run-time system, complementary host tools and certified third party applications. eCosCentric will also develop, maintain, and make available to Altera customers its eCosPro Starter and Developers Kits for the Nios II processor.

"Embedded designers today are trying to minimise licensing costs and hardware resource requirements, while at the same time retaining simplicity and flexibility," said Chris Balough, director of software and embedded marketing at Altera. "By working with companies like eCosCentric to provide broad RTOS support for the Nios II embedded processor, we are enabling developers to conquer their design challenges."

"The flexible and configurable nature of eCos^® is an ideal match for the Nios II embedded processor" said Daniel Morris, sales and marketing director at eCosCentric. "The availability of eCosPro will fulfil the strong demand from designers working with Nios II that want to rely on a certified release of eCos in their products."

About Nios II Embedded Processors

The 32-bit Nios II embedded processors are backed by a full range of embedded software tools and operating system support from Altera and industry-leading embedded partners. As a soft-core processor, Nios II can be implemented in any of Altera's FPGA or structured ASIC device families. Used by each of the world's top 20 OEMs and with more than 20,000 development kits sold worldwide, the Nios II processor is the most popular configurable soft processor in the industry. For more information, visit http://www.altera.com/nios2.

About eCosPro

eCosPro is a stable, fully tested and supported version of the eCos open source real-time operating system and RedBoot bootstrap firmware. The eCosPro Developer's Kit is a distribution of eCosPro with commercial support & advice, prebuilt eCos host tools, compiler tool chains, full documentation, Eclipse-based integrated development environment to streamline eCos application development (including graphical debugger), C++ runtime (including Standard Template Library) as well as profiling, code coverage and memory allocation debugging tools. Third party components certified with eCosPro include a Java virtual machine, an in-memory database, graphical user interfaces, Bluetooth, CANopen, and USB 2.0 compliant host, device & OTG stacks.

Pricing and Availability

The eCosPro Starter Kit for Nios II processors is available at no charge for registered Nios II customers. Upgrades are available to the eCosPro Developer's Kit, which includes commercial support and advice, an Eclipse-based IDE, additional drivers, libraries and development tools. The Nios II processor is available royalty-free from Altera as part of development kits featuring the Cyclone™, Cyclone II, Stratix^®, Stratix II, Stratix III FPGAs and upcoming Cyclone III development kits. For further details of the eCosPro Starter and Developer's Kits for Nios II processors visit http://www.ecoscentric.com/nios or contact info@ecoscentric.com.

About Altera

Altera^® programmable solutions enable system and semiconductor companies to rapidly and cost-effectively innovate, differentiate and win in their markets. Find out more at http://www.altera.com.

About eCosCentric

Founded in April 2002, eCosCentric is the leading provider of eCos and RedBoot support, training, development and consulting services worldwide. Staffed by the original eCos creators and highly experienced embedded system and software engineers, eCosCentric provides complete solutions consisting of run-time systems, complementary host tools and certified third party applications.

Altera, The Programmable Solutions Company, the stylised Altera logo, specific device designations, and all other words that are identified as trademarks and/or service marks are, unless noted otherwise, the trademarks and service marks of Altera Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. All other product or service names are the property of their respective holder.

eCos, eCosCentric and eCosPro are registered trademarks of eCosCentric Limited.