Altera realizing 2X core performance gain with Stratix 10 FPGAs and SoCs

SAN JOSE, USA: Altera Corp. announced Stratix 10 FPGA and SoC customers are successfully achieving the anticipated 2X core performance gain in their designs compared to previous generation high-performance programmable devices.

Altera is working closely with several early access customers in multiple markets to benchmark their next-generation designs using Stratix 10 FPGA performance evaluation tools. The breakthrough leap in FPGA core performance customers are experiencing is a result of Intel's 14 nm Tri-Gate process technology and the groundbreaking Stratix 10 HyperFlex architecture.

HyperFlex - Altera's next-generation core fabric architecture for Stratix 10 devices - represents the FPGA industry's most significant leap in architectural innovations in over a decade and enables applications not possible using conventional FPGA architectures. Stratix 10 FPGAs and SoCs with the HyperFlex architecture are able to meet the demands of the most advanced, performance-critical applications in the networking, communications, broadcast, military, and compute and storage markets.

Early access customers are experiencing firsthand the significant performance gains that Stratix 10 devices deliver. Through the Stratix 10 FPGA early access program, Altera is working with several customers to run their existing designs through performance evaluation tools built for Stratix 10 FPGAs.

The customer designs target a wide range of applications and leverage a variety of hardware design approaches, including ASIC replacement designs, traditional high-performance FPGA communication designs and high-throughput data center and computation designs. In all cases customers experienced at least a 2X jump in their design's performance using Stratix 10 FPGAs.

"Altera's claim of 2X performance improvements seemed unimaginable when we first engaged in its Stratix 10 FPGA early access program," said Bernd Liebetrau, head of CoC Digital Integration at Rohde & Schwarz.

"After only a few days working together and receiving great guidance from Altera technical staff, we were able to run one of our existing designs through Altera's design tools and experience over twice the performance that our design previously ran. This level of performance will open up new applications for us that were previously unheard of in an FPGA."

In addition to benchmarking customer designs, Altera has also optimized several of its soft IP cores for the Stratix 10 HyperFlex architecture to deliver similar 2X performance gains. Altera's optical transport network (OTN) IP portfolio, running at 350 MHz in previous generation high-performance FPGAs, is achieving over 700 MHz performance with Stratix 10 devices.

Altera's 400 GbE IP, currently running with a 1024-bit wide data path in Stratix V FPGAs, operates with a 512-bit wide data path at 2X the performance with the HyperFlex architecture, delivering the same high throughput at significantly reduced area utilization within the programmable core fabric.

Patrick Dorsey, senior director of product marketing at Altera, said: "We realize that we were bold when we stated a 2X breakthrough in logic performance was achievable through architectural innovation and process technology leadership. Working side-by-side with customers, we have jointly confirmed what is possible with our next-generation Stratix 10 FPGA and SoC platform, and the results are remarkable."