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Deterministic Fabric for Physical AI

As Physical AI transforms robots, vehicles, factories, and other intelligent systems, the need for fast, synchronized sensor data is growing. Altera® FPGAs enable deterministic sensor processing, with the right filtered and feature-extracted data, in real-time, that delivers AI-ready information with low, predictable latency.

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Sense, decide, act

Hard real-time control loops with deterministic response

µs

Microsecond, jitter-free determinism across data path

Edge to Cloud

One scalable fabric across system tiers

IEC 61508

Functional-safety-ready logic, tools and IP

From Fixed Automation to Physical AI

Machines are moving from pre-programmed sequences to systems that perceive their environment, reason about it, and act on it in real time. That transition floods the edge with high-bandwidth, multi-modal data: cameras, LiDAR, radar, IMUs, encoders, tactile and torque sensors, and industrial fieldbuses. All of it must be time-aligned, feature-extracted and pre-processed before an AI accelerator can make a decision worth trusting.

Heterogeneous sensors

Vision, LiDAR, radar, IMUs, encoders, tactile, torque, industrial I/O

FPGA fabric: connect · synchronize · process · protect

Deterministic aggregation, fusion assist, timing, and preprocessing

AI compute (CPU / GPU / NPU)

Perception, planning, decision, simulation and feedback loops

Four Things the Fabric Does Between Sensors and Compute

Rather than displacing CPUs or AI accelerators, the FPGA adds a deterministic infrastructure layer alongside them, connecting, synchronizing, processing, and protecting the data path.

Multi-Sensor Ingest

Connect heterogeneous sensors through a scalable, deterministic path.

Explore sensor interface solutions →

Precision Timing and Control

Maintain time alignment and deterministic behavior across modalities.

  • IEEE 1588 / PTP
  • TSN functions
  • IMU synchronization
  • Encoder capture and triggers

Explore networking and timing IP →

Data-Path Acceleration

Reduce CPU/GPU overhead and deliver structured data efficiently.

  • Sensor pre-processing and fusion assist
  • Data compression
  • PCIe DMA streaming
  • Protocol bridging

Security and Platform Awareness

Add real-time supervision and protection directly in the data path.

  • Inline encryption
  • Sensor health monitoring
  • Fault detection
  • Secure boot assistance

Explore security solutions →

The Pure-Play FPGA Leader Behind the Fabric

Pure-Play FPGA Focus

FPGAs are Altera's entire business, not a side business competing for resources. Every roadmap, software, and support decision serves programmable logic customers, so the platform under your machine keeps advancing.

 

One Portfolio, One Design Flow

The Agilex® family spans watt-class endpoints to RF-class throughput on one architecture, and the whole portfolio shares Quartus® Prime software. Scale a design up or down without changing vendors or retraining teams.

 

Built for Machines People Count On

Functional-safety-ready logic, tools, and IP, a hardware root of trust, and long product lifecycles keep machines certified, protected, and in service for the long haul.

 

A Proven Physical AI Ecosystem

Holoscan Sensor Bridge on Agilex 5 SoC FPGAs earned Best in Show at Embedded World 2026, and validated partner boards and reference designs shorten the path from prototype to production.

 

One Fabric, Applied Across Every Physical AI Domain

The same deterministic ingest and synchronize pattern maps cleanly onto the highest-growth edge workloads.

ROBOTICS 

Humanoids and Mobile Robots

Aggregate navigation cameras and LiDAR, balance/orientation IMUs, joint encoders and tactile sensors into low-latency, synchronized streams for perception, SLAM and motion planning.

Explore the robotics solutions stack → 

INDUSTRIAL 

Factory Automation and Digital Twins

Turn factory-floor signals from PLCs, servo drives, machine vision, and safety and vibration sensors over industrial Ethernet into deterministic, visualization-ready data for real-time edge control and digital twins.

Explore industrial solutions → 

MANIPULATION 

Adaptive Trajectory Generation

Fuse robot-arm state, conveyor position, part tracking, and inspection cues so trajectory updates stay deterministic and low-latency for adaptive manufacturing.

Explore motor drive solutions → 

Clinical imaging system in a surgical suite

HEALTHCARE 

Medical Imaging and Clinical Systems

Ingest high-throughput CT detector data and 4K endoscope video with low-latency pre-processing for AI reconstruction, tissue detection, and clinical visualization at the point of care.

Explore healthcare solutions → 

Autonomous drone scanning terrain with sensors

AERIAL 

Autonomous Drones and Missions

Time-synchronize multi-camera arrays, thermal video, radar, LiDAR, and flight data into fused streams for onboard perception, navigation, and autonomous execution.

Explore aerospace and defense → 

Vehicle with sensor fields for ADAS

TRANSPORTATION 

ADAS and Software-Defined Vehicles

Perform sensor processing and fusion across camera, LiDAR, radar, and cabin sensors, delivering structured, synchronized data to the vehicle's central compute safely and efficiently.

Explore transportation solutions → 

Large LED wall in a live production venue

BROADCAST & PRO AV 

ST 2110 / IPMX and LED Walls

Enable low-latency video transport, slicing, scaling, and region partitioning for synchronized, scalable visual distribution across large-format displays.

Explore broadcast and Pro AV → 

TEST & MEASUREMENT 

Automated Test and Instrumentation

Stream high-bandwidth device-under-test telemetry deterministically for real-time analytics, adaptive test decisions, and production test optimization.

Explore test and measurement → 

CONSUMER & EDGE 

Smart Devices and Vision

Accelerate image capture, enhancement, and data reduction at the edge, keeping devices responsive and power-efficient while AI compute works from clean, structured data.

Explore FPGA AI solutions → 

A Broad Device Range for Every Performance, Power, and Lifecycle Point

From microsecond hard-real-time endpoints at a couple of watts to throughput-optimized aggregation and RF processing, one family tree spans the edge-to-cloud sensor path.

Device FamilyRole in the Physical AI Data Path
Agilex® 9Direct RF, high-speed data conversion, and advanced RF / radar processing.
Agilex 7Multi-sensor aggregation, 100GbE networking, radar/LiDAR preprocessing, PCIe Gen5 streaming.
Agilex 5Primary edge sensor hub — vision aggregation, synchronization, deterministic preprocessing, TSN, in-fabric AI Tensor blocks.
Agilex 3Cost-optimized smart sensor gateways, distributed preprocessing, protocol conversion, edge AI.
Arria® 10Midrange FPGA/SoC option for embedded processing and transceiver interfaces.
Cyclone® 10Cost- and power-optimized, legacy interfaces, I/O expansion and long lifecycle designs.
MAX® 10Safety, sequencing, watchdogs, secure-boot assistance and power management.

Three Steps from Concept to Prototype

Review physical AI design examples, including Drive-on-Chip, PLC, and functional-safety references, to see the fabric pattern working end to end.

Bring the design up on an Agilex development kit or a validated partner board with Quartus Prime software and the IP suites above.

Start with the Agilex 5 SoC FPGA, the primary edge sensor hub, then scale up or down across the family as your data path demands.

Talk to an Altera Physical AI Expert

Bring us your sensor-to-compute challenge. We’ll help map it to the right FPGA, IP stack, and development platform.

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