Altera introduces the Cyclone™ II FPGA family, the latest in the Cyclone series of low-cost FPGAs. Altera forever changed the FPGA industry with the introduction of the Cyclone device family in 2002-bringing to market the first and only FPGA family designed from the ground up for the lowest cost. Altera took the same approach and built the Cyclone II family with each member individually optimized for minimum die size. The Cyclone II FPGA family offers the same benefits as its predecessor-a customer-defined feature set, industry-leading performance, and low power consumption-but with much more density and features-at dramatically lower costs. Cyclone II devices extend the low-cost FPGA density range up to 68,416 logic elements (LEs) and up to 1.1 Mbits of embedded memory.

Cyclone II devices are manufactured on 300-mm wafers using TSMC's 90-nm low-k dielectric process, the same proven process used with Altera's Stratix® II devices. This process technology will ensure rapid availability and low cost. By minimizing silicon area, Cyclone II devices can support complex digital systems on a single chip at a cost that rivals that of ASICs.