What you’ll learn:
- Where Agilex 3 fits in Altera’s lineup.
- The development software that supports Agilex 3.
Altera’s spinoff from Intel coincided with its release of the Agilex 3 FPGA family. This fills out the low end of the spectrum targeting standalone and edge applications where low cost and low power are definite advantages. The Agilex family spans Agilex 3, 5, 7 and 9. The existing Cyclone and Max devices are still supported, but Agilex 3 provides the latest, more power-efficient implementations.
The Agilex 3 FPGA family currently includes B-Series and C-Series chips. The B-Series targets applications like board-, platform-, and system-level management subsystems. The C-Series chips address more general FPGA applications.
Specifics on the chips are a bit sparse at this point. The logic count will be lower than the Agilex 5. The Agilex 3 will not include the Arm-based hard-core processors found in higher-level Agilex platforms starting with Agilex 5. The Agilex 3 is likely to support the adaptive logic module (ALM) found in the existing FPGA series, including the Agilex 5 (see figure).
The ALM can be used for a number of functions, e.g., 7-input logic functions. It has two clock sources and can provide split functions such as two independent 4-input functions.
The Agilex family, including Agilex 3, is supported by Altera’s Quartus Prime Design Software. Quartus also supports older FPGA families like Arria, Stratix, and Cyclone.
