Altera has preannounced the Agilex 3 FPGA family. Slated to ship next year and fabricated in the Intel 7 process, they range from 25K to 135K logic elements. Among the performance, power, and feature upgrades, a few things stand out:
- Agilex 3 replaces Cyclone V, an FPGA family introduced in 2012. Low-end products don’t need to be updated as frequently as high-end ones, but a refresh is long overdue. Once Altera spins out from Intel, it’s less likely to let products go stale.
- Agilex 3 integrates the Cortex-A55, an upgrade from Cyclone V’s Cortex-A9 but still an old CPU dating back to 2017. Rather than faulting Altera for choosing old technology, we fault Arm for failing to deliver a successor with better power, performance, area, and price.
Bottom Line
The forthcoming Agilex 3 family is an overdue update to the Altera product line, scaling its FPGA architecture to lower densities and (presumably) prices. Its integrated Cortex-A55, however, highlights how Arm has yet to improve upon the Cortex-A55.