Cyclone III low-cost FPGAs
Unlimited possibilities
Your design ideas have the potential to prosper.
But, in the end, they are only as good as your
ability to execute. Cyclone
®
III FPGAs deliver the
value you need for cost-sensitive applications—
the ability to produce more, sooner, and for less.
With Cyclone III FPGAs, your potential for great
design is unlimited. Watch your great ideas take
root and grow.
Unlimited possibilities
Altera® Cyclone III low-cost FPGAs deliver an
unprecedented combination of low power, high
functionality, and low cost. Manufactured using the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s
(TSMC’s) 65-nm low-power (LP) process technology,
these devices consume very low power, often for a lower
total cost than ASICs. Cyclone III FPGAs are part of our
complete design solutions portfolio, ideal for your cost-
sensitive, high-volume applications.
With Cyclone III FPGAs, your great ideas
will quickly turn into revenue. Your
possibilities are unlimited.
2
Cyclone III FPGAs • March 2007 •
www.altera.com
We deliver what you need—
every time
low-cost
65-nm FPGA
industry’s first
We know you’re pressed to go to market in a hurry with premium quality, cutting-edge products.
We’re also aware that the days of deep pockets are over. At Altera, you drive our product definition.
We listen to you carefully to uncover your design and business challenges, making you the inspiration
for our next-generation products. And we’ll keep on listening—from product definition through
design to delivery. We defined, designed, and are delivering Cyclone III FPGAs with the ideal features
for your needs—nothing more, nothing less.
After product definition, Altera uses a very rigorous product design process, working hand in hand
with our foundry partner TSMC. We validate functionality with dozens of test chips to ensure quality
and on-time delivery so you can design with confidence.
The FPGA advantage gets you to
market first
You’re in a race and anything you can do to be
more efficient is going to positively impact your
bottom line. FPGAs give you the flexibility you
need because they are reprogrammable. Even
after your product is in the market, you can
make updates on the fly and adapt to market
changes fast. You can use Cyclone III FPGAs as
the heart of your system. If you already have an
ASIC in your system, you can use Cyclone III
FPGAs to coprocess and enhance your current
product with added features. Or, you can offload
functionality from the ASIC onto the Cyclone III
FPGA. You can use our devices for typical ASSP
functions and not be locked into keeping that
functionality in the future. The real benefit:
shorter development time and low cost. You’ll
cut your time from a year or more to just weeks.
You can continuously introduce feature
enhancements and respond to customer needs or
competitor threats. The risk is next to none.
Cyclone III FPGAs • March 2007 •
www.altera.com
Features and benefits
You can turn ideas into revenue faster than
ever because we deliver numerous features and
benefits that help you lower your system and
development costs. Flexibility enables you to
keep up with fast-evolving standards easily.
Scalable digital signal processing (DSP) perfor-
mance and embedded memory let you increase
or enhance feature sets. All of this with the lowest
power consumption of any FPGA available
today. To top it off, we’re the lowest-cost FPGA
solution around. Choose Altera to win.
Cyclone III floorplan
Cyclone III floorplan
Phase-locked loops
M9K memory blocks
Logic array
Embedded 18-bit x 18-bit
multipliers
Side I/O cells with support for
LVDS signals up to 875 Mbps
Top and bottom I/O cells for
memory interfaces up to 400 Mbps
Lowest-power
65-nm
FPGAs
• Manufactured using a low-power 65-nm process technology.
• Core static power as low as 35 mW at 25
o
C junction temperature.
• Support for hot-socketing operation so unused I/O banks can be turned
off when there’s no current.
• Low-power benefits include: system thermal management, elimination
or reduction in cooling system costs, and extended battery life for
portable applications.
for the
best value
anywhere
Cost optimized
• Staggered I/O ring to reduce die size and board space.
• Selection of low-cost packages.
• Support for low-cost serial flash and commodity parallel flash configu-
ration devices.
• Cyclone series FPGAs are built from the ground up for low cost.
system
integration
Complete
• 1.7 times the density to 120,000 logic elements (LEs) and over 3.5 times
the embedded memory to 4 Mbits over Cyclone II FPGAs.
• 260-MHz multiplier performance with the highest multiplier-to-logic
ratio in the industry.
• Robust clock management and synthesis with dynamically reconfigu-
rable and flexible phase-locked loops (PLLs).
• Improved signal integrity with adjustable I/O slew rates.
• Support for high-speed external memory interfaces including DDR,
DDR2, SDR SDRAM, and QDRII SRAM with an autocalibrating PHY
for fast timing closure.
• Support for I/O standards including LVTTL, LVCMOS, SSTL, High-
Speed Transceiver Logic (HSTL), PCI Express, LVPECL, LVDS, mini-
LVDS, reduced swing differential signaling (RSDS), and point-to-point
differential signaling (PPDS).
Cyclone III FPGAs • March 2007 •
www.altera.com
Forging ahead in new applications
Due to their unprecedented combination of low power, high functionality, and low cost, you can use
Cyclone III FPGAs in an ever-expanding list of high-volume applications—many of which were previously exclusive
to ASICs and ASSPs. These are just a few of the many application areas where we can help you prosper.
Video and image
processing
Game, set, match point. You’ll
catch all the action clearly in both
standard-definition and high-
definition transmissions. Our
devices are a perfect fit for DSP,
video system I/O, video compression
encoding and decoding, and other
video and image processing tasks.
Drive these cost-sensitive applica-
tions and others with the parallel
processing capability of DSP-rich
and memory-rich Cyclone III FPGAs.
The ball keeps moving faster. With
us, you’ll stay a step ahead.
Displays
Picture perfect. That’s what you want
to achieve, whether it’s liquid crystal
displays, plasma display panels,
plasma low-profile, or liquid crystal
on silicon. Of course, you have to
reach your goals faster and cheaper
than the competition. And there’s a
lot of competition to beat. We help
you create a single platform that can
be used for multiple product lines
and image resolutions. You’ll be able
to deliver the latest feature set in no
time. Get to volume first using
display-optimized features to
seamlessly integrate designs, rapidly
update products, and lower costs in
your system so you’re crystal clear.
Wireless
Connecting on the go shapes our
world. People keep moving farther,
faster, in no time, and so does the
wireless technology that makes it
all possible. In areas such as digital
intermediate frequency (IF) and
baseband modems, you can achieve
high-bandwidth parallel processing.
Lower your cost and power con-
sumption with Cyclone III DSP-rich
and memory-rich FPGAs. Make the
world a better connected place.
The complete answer for your design challenges
Get started now.
Download your free Quartus II
Web Edition software to design
with Cyclone III FPGAs today.
Your creative energy can bring about the next blockbuster
product. Altera’s suite of complete, easy-to-use, free tools and
support assure you of a smooth and successful design process.
We give you a complete answer for your design challenges. With
Altera, you can focus your creative energy on the leading edge—
exactly where you belong.
Maximize productivity with Quartus II
design software
Quartus® II software is the industry leader in performance and
productivity for low-power, low-cost FPGA designs. Automatic
system-level integration and industry-leading compile times will
help you close timing faster. You will also benefit from our
automated power analysis and optimization features. Quartus II
software makes designing easy and fast, so you can move more of
your designs to production sooner.
Cyclone III FPGAs • March 2007 •
www.altera.com