Altera Unveils FPGAs Optimized for Cost and Power

What's New: Altera, an Intel® Company, today unveiled an array of FPGA hardware, software and development tools that make its programmable solutions more accessible across a broader range of use cases and markets. At its annual developer's conference, Altera revealed new details on its next-generation, power- and cost-optimized Agilex™ 3 FPGAs and announced new development kits and software support for its Agilex 5 FPGAs.

"Working closely with our ecosystem and distribution partners, Altera remains committed to delivering FPGA-based solutions that empower innovators with leading-edge programmable technologies that are easy to design and deploy. With these key announcements, we continue to execute on our vision of shaping the future by using programmable logic to help customers unlock greater value across a broad range of use cases within the data center, aerospace and defense sectors, communications infrastructure, automotive, industrial, test, medical and embedded markets."

-Sandra Rivera, CEO of Altera

Why It Matters: Altera is the only independent FPGA supplier with full-stack solutions that are optimized across high-performance accelerated computing systems, next-generation communications infrastructure and intelligent edge applications. The company's comprehensive FPGA portfolio provides customers with flexible hardware that rapidly adapts to changing market requirements driven by the era of intelligent compute. Altera is leading the industry's use of FPGAs in AI inference workloads with Agilex FPGAs infused with AI Tensor Blocks and the Altera FPGA AI Suite, which accelerates FPGA development for AI inference using popular frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch and OpenVINO™ toolkit and proven FPGA development flows.

What Agilex 3 FPGAs Offer: Altera announced today new product details for its Agilex 3 FPGAs, designed to meet the power, performance and size requirements of embedded and intelligent edge applications. Compared to the previous generation, Agilex 3 FPGAs bring higher levels of integration, enhanced security, and higher performance in a compact package, with densities ranging from 25K-135K logic elements.

The FPGA family features an on-chip dual Cortex A55 ARM hard processor subsystem with a programmable fabric infused with AI capabilities. For intelligent edge applications, the FPGA enables real-time compute for time-sensitive applications like autonomous vehicles and industrial Internet of Things (IoT). For smart factory automation technologies like machine vision and robotics, Agilex 3 FPGAs allow for the seamless integration of sensors, drivers, actuators and machine learning algorithms.

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To meet the needs of both defense and commercial projects, Agilex 3 FPGAs add several significant security enhancements over the previous generation, including bitstream encryption, authentication, and physical anti-tamper detection. These capabilities ensure reliable and secure performance for critical applications in industrial automation and beyond.

Agilex 3 FPGAs leverage Altera's HyperFlex™ architecture to provide a 1.9x¹ performance improvement over the previous generation. Extending the HyperFlex architecture to Agilex 3 FPGAs enables high clock frequencies in a power- and cost-optimized FPGA. Additional system performance is achieved through integrated high-speed transceivers operating up to 12.5 Gbps and added support for LPDDR4 memory.

Software support for Agilex 3 FPGAs will start in Q1 2025, with development kits and production shipments expected to start in mid-2025.

How FPGA Software Tools Accelerate Time-to-Market: Altera also announced the newest features offered in its Quartus® Prime Pro software, which empowers developers with industry-leading compile times, improved designer productivity and accelerated time-to-market. The upcoming Quartus Prime Pro 24.3 release unlocks more devices within the Agilex portfolio and enables improved support for embedded applications.

Customers can use this upcoming release to start designing Agilex 5 FPGA D-series, which targets an even broader range of use cases compared to Agilex 5 FPGA E-series, which are optimized to deliver efficient compute in edge applications. Altera offers software support for its Agilex 5 FPGA E-series through a no-cost license in the Quartus Prime Software, helping to lower the barriers to entry for Altera's mid-range FPGA family.

This software release also includes support for embedded applications that employ either an integrated hard-processor subsystem or Altera's RISC-V solution, the Nios® V soft-core processor that can be instantiated in the FPGA fabric. Customers can now access Agilex 5 FPGA design examples that showcase Nios V capabilities such as lockstep, full ECC, and branch prediction. New OS and RTOS support for the Agilex 5 SoC FPGA-based hard processor subsystem is included in the latest releases of Linux, VxWorks and Zephyr.

How Developers Can Get Started: Altera and its ecosystem partners announced 11 new Agilex 5 FPGA-based development kits and system-on-modules (SoMs), joining a broad collection of Agilex 5 and Agilex 7 FPGA-based solutions available to help developers get started.

FPGA development kits give developers easy and affordable access to Altera hardware, first-hand experience of the capabilities and benefits Agilex FPGAs can deliver, and a faster path to full-volume production.

Kits are accessible across all geographic regions and a broad range of use cases. For purchasing information, visit Altera's Partner Showcase site.

About Altera

Altera, an Intel company, is a leading supplier of programmable hardware, software, and development tools that enable designers of electronic systems to rapidly and cost-effectively innovate, differentiate, and win in their markets. For more information, visit Altera's website.

_{The Small Print:}

_{¹ The geomean increase in the maximum frequency (fMAX) as reported by Quartus (Prime rev. 24.3, Standard rev. 20.1) across a Quality of Results design suite (consisting of 45 separate designs) when targeting a similar density Agilex 3 FPGA versus Cyclone V FPGA.}