Build flexibility into your industrial applications using Altera® FPGAs as coprocessors or system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions. Our FPGAs offer many design advantages because they are, among other things:
- Reprogrammable, even in the field, to adapt to changing features and protocols
- Highly integrated, accommodating hard and soft intellectual property (IP) blocks, embedded processors, transceivers, rich memory resources, and other functions
- Supported by a common, productivity-enhancing design environment
Learn how Altera FPGAs, such as our low-cost, low-power Cyclone® series, can help you address some of your toughest industrial application design challenges.
Adapt to Changes
- Need a new feature in your application? Design it in and reprogram the FPGA whenever the change arises.
- Support evolving standards, such as Industrial Ethernet protocols including EtherCAT, SERCOS III, and PROFINET, even when your product is in the field
Increase Design Integration
- Increase functionality of your applications with hard intellectual property (IP) blocks and software stacks
- Lower total costs
- Simplify your design process, reduce component count and costs, and streamline your supply chain
Scale Performance
- Add embedded processors, custom instructions, and hardware accelerators like digital signal processing (DSP) blocks to enhance performance-hungry applications
- Support industrial-grade temperatures
Lower Your Costs
- Use a single FPGA-based platform for multiple product releases, from programmable logic controllers to factory automation systems
- Offload costly discrete components through IP integration on the FPGA
- Avoid costly respins, a common issue with technologies that become obsolete faster than FPGAs
- Protect against obsolescence with long FPGA life cycles, just what long-lasting industrial equipment needs
Key Industrial Applications
Here, we spotlight some key applications where designing with FPGAs can be a competitive advantage.
Functional Safety: Safety is more critical than ever for a wide variety of industrial automation applications. Learn more about our TÜV-qualified functional safety data package, which includes device safety documentation.
I/O Hub: A PCI Express®-enabled processor connected to an Altera transceiver FPGA-based I/O hub, or companion device, is ideal for many embedded industrial applications. Learn how an FPGA supports different slave peripherals, I/O standards, and even an embedded soft core processor such as the Nios® II processor for local control and data processing within the FPGA.
Industrial Networking: Factories are migrating from serial fieldbus communication protocol standards to Ethernet systems that support real-time, deterministic connectivity within machines and between equipment. But evolving standards makes this a challenge. Learn how our FPGAs support a single platform that easily adapts to changing protocol standards.
Machine Vision: Machine vision equipment uses a combination of high-speed cameras and computers to perform complex inspection tasks in addition to digital image acquisition and analysis. Learn how a single FPGA can integrate a wide range of functions and support a variety of evolving bus and camera interfaces.
Motor Control: Designing motor control applications is almost an art, given all of the algorithms that must be integrated into a design that must run as efficiently as possible. Learn how our FPGAs can help you control motors more efficiently and position motor controllers more precisely, while also reducing costs and power.
Video Surveillance: As surveillance cameras become more ubiquitous, they must provide increasingly more sophisticated capabilities like wide dynamic range (WDR) sensors. Learn how our FPGAs support high-definition image processing in surveillance cameras.
Related Links
- Watch Video: 3 Ways to Quickly Adapt to Changing Ethernet Protocols
- Watch Webcast: 3 Reasons to Use FPGAs in Industrial Applications
- Get the Industrial Networking Kit
