Agilex Ships to Early Access Program Customers
| 40% Up in Performance, 40% Down in Power Compared to Stratix 10
| Continuum provides custom logic for migration

In the 5G era, where data will be central, data centers face the challenge of increasing network bandwidth and reducing latency to provide seamless services.

Accordingly, Intel announced on the 2nd that it has started shipping 'Intel Agilex' FPGAs manufactured using a 10nm process to early access program customers.

The early access program customers are Colorado Engineering, Mantaro Networks, Microsoft, and Silicom. These customers are using Agilex to develop advanced solutions for networking, 5G, and accelerated data analytics.

Reconfigurable and with reduced power consumption, Agilex provides the flexibility and agility needed to address these challenges with high performance and low latency.

Agilex creates intelligent, higher-bandwidth networks through accelerated AI and other analytics performed across the edge, cloud, and the entire network. It also provides computational capabilities that deliver actionable insights in real time and high-speed interface capabilities.

Doug Burger, a technical fellow at Microsoft Azure Hardware Systems, explained, “Microsoft plans to use Agilex A in a number of future projects,” adding, “Agilex provides significant value in accelerating real-time AI, networking, and other applications and infrastructure in data center services such as Azure Cloud Services and Bing.”

The Intel Agilex product family combines several innovative Intel technologies, including the '2nd generation HyperFlex FPGA fabric' built on Intel's 10nm process and heterogeneous 3D SiP (Silicon-in-Package) technology based on Intel's 'EMIB (Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge)' technology. With this combination, Intel was able to integrate analog, memory, custom computing, custom I/O, and Intel eASIC device tiles into a single package with an FPGA fabric.

Intel provides custom logic continuum to enable developers to seamlessly migrate designs from FPGAs to structured ASICs.

Agilex supports Compute Express Link (CXL), a cache and memory coherence interconnect with Intel Xeon Scalable processors, and achieved up to 40% higher performance or up to 40% lower total power compared to Intel Stratix 10 FPGAs.

Agilex, which supports BFLOAT16 enhanced with up to 40 teraflops of digital signal processor (DSP) performance (FP16), adopts PCIe Gen 5 to ensure higher bandwidth compared to PCIe Gen 4. It also supports data speeds of up to 112Gbps for high-speed networking requirements of 400GE or higher, and supports DDR4 and upcoming DDR5, HBM, and Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory.

The design and development of Intel Agilex FPGAs are possible through Intel Quartus Prime Design Software.

Dan McNamara, Intel Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Networking and Custom Logic Group, said, “The Intel Agilex FPGA family leverages a wide range of Intel innovation and technology leadership, including architecture, packaging, process technology, developer tools, and power savings through eASIC technology.”

"They stated, 'These assets provide a new level of heterogeneous computing, system integration, and processor connectivity, and will be the first 10nm FPGA to provide cache coherence and low-latency connectivity to Intel Xeon processors through the upcoming CXL.'"