Altera unveils Agilex 3 FPGAs & new development kits

Altera, an Intel company, has revealed new details on its forthcoming Agilex 3 Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), as well as development kits and software support for the Agilex 5 series.

Sandra Rivera, Chief Executive Officer of Altera, stated, "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 centre, aerospace and defence sectors, communications infrastructure, automotive, industrial, test, medical and embedded markets."

Altera described the Agilex 3 FPGA architecture as featuring a dual-core Cortex-A55 ARM hard processor subsystem and a programmable fabric infused with artificial intelligence capabilities. The architecture is aimed at supporting demanding workloads such as real-time signal processing, motor control, video analytics, and machine learning inference.

The new Agilex 3 FPGAs are designed to meet the power, performance, and size requirements for embedded and intelligent edge applications. The company claims a performance improvement of 1.9 times over the previous generation, facilitated by its HyperFlex architecture. "Extending the HyperFlex architecture to Agilex 3 FPGAs enables high clock frequencies in a power- and cost-optimised FPGA," added the company statement.

Other enhancements include on-chip dual Cortex A55 ARM processors and improved security features like bitstream encryption, authentication, and physical anti-tamper detection.

For smart factory automation and industrial applications, the Agilex 3 FPGAs enable integration with sensors, drivers, actuators, and machine learning algorithms. Agilex 3 FPGAs also cater to time-sensitive applications in the fields of autonomous vehicles and industrial IoT by supporting real-time compute.

Altera also introduced the latest features in its Quartus Prime Pro software. The upcoming Quartus Prime Pro 24.3 release is designed to improve compile times, enhance designer productivity, and accelerate time-to-market. This version unlocks more devices within the Agilex portfolio and will support embedded applications and various Agilex 5 FPGA models.

The Quartus Prime Pro 24.3 release will also allow for development with the Nios V soft-core processor instantiated in the FPGA fabric. New OS and RTOS support for the Agilex 5 System on Chip (SoC) FPGA-based hard processor subsystem are included, with support from Linux, VxWorks, and Zephyr.

To facilitate developers' initial engagements with these technologies, Altera and its ecosystem partners announced 11 new Agilex 5 FPGA-based development kits and system-on-modules (SoMs). According to Altera, these kits provide easy and affordable access to development hardware, enabling developers to experience Agilex FPGAs' capabilities first-hand and speed up the transition to full-volume production.

The new developments from Altera reflect a comprehensive strategy to support high-performance accelerated computing systems, next-generation communications infrastructure, and intelligent edge applications.

The company continues to focus on ensuring its technologies remain relevant and adaptable to rapidly changing market demands.