Altera Introduces Agilex 3 Family of Small FPGAs for Energy-Efficient Systems

Altera, a spinoff of Intel’s Programmable Solutions Group (PSG), has announced the Agilex 3 family of FPGAs for low-power, low-cost systems. Applications include process automation, medical imaging, video surveillance, transportation monitoring, edge AI computing, and more.

Agilex 3 was announced in September last year. It uses the second-generation HyperFlex architecture. The solutions include an FPGA with AI capabilities and two Arm Cortex-A55 cores with a clock frequency of 800 MHz. According to Altera, Agilex 3 chips provide a 1.9-fold increase in performance compared to Cyclone V with a reduction in power consumption of up to 38%.

Image source: Altera

The Agilex 3 transceivers are rated for data transfer rates of up to 12.5 Gbps. Support for PCIe 3.0 x4 and 10GbE interfaces is mentioned. An advanced digital signal processor with an AI Tensor Block provides peak AI performance of 2.8 TOPS on INT8 operations. Various security features are implemented, including secure boot, AES encryption, and FPGA configuration management.

The Agilex 3 family includes the A3C025, A3C050, A3C065, A3C100, and A3C135 models, with 25,075 to 135,110 logical elements. LPDDR4-2133 memory is supported. The products are available in 12×12, 16×16, or 18×18 mm packages.

Examples of where Agilex 3 can be used include robotic systems, where FPGAs provide real-time control for multi-axis manipulators. In industrial cameras, the chips improve defect detection. Pre-orders for the products are already open.