Altera Agilex FPGAs Provide the Flexible, Deterministic Sensor-to-GPU Data Path for Medical Physical AI
SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--#FPGA--Altera, the largest pure-play FPGA provider with a full-spectrum portfolio, today announced that its 100G FPGA-based Holoscan Sensor Bridge solution is being demonstrated at NVIDIA GTC Berlin as part of a Yuan ultrasound raw-to-insights live demonstration. Built by Yuan, the Altera FPGA-based Terasic sensor aggregation platform pairs a Texas Instruments Ultrasound EVM with a Yuan NEAR 7TX T7000-based system, combining sensor connectivity through the NVIDIA Holoscan Sensor Bridge with a real-time image-processing pipeline for low-latency visualization.
The demonstration illustrates NVIDIA Holoscan’s raw-to-insights approach for medical technology, using GPU-accelerated processing and AI to transform raw sensor data from modalities such as ultrasound, multispectral imaging, Bayer-pattern color imaging, and computed tomography into information that can support clinical workflows. Altera FPGAs provide flexible I/O, high-speed connectivity, and deterministic data movement needed to transport that data into GPU platforms for real-time processing and AI inference, while NVIDIA Holoscan coordinates the data flow and image-processing pipeline.
“Medical devices are entering an era in which raw sensor data can move directly into advanced compute platform, enabling unprecedented diagnostics capability,” said Farhad Shafai, head of Business Solutions and Marketing at Altera. “FPGAs, with their flexible I/O and deterministic, low-latency behavior, are central to physical AI because they provide the bridge between sensors and the GPU. Altera brings high-speed connectivity capabilities to that bridge, helping system developers build medical devices that are more capable, adaptable, and supporting ecosystem to build faster time to market solutions.”
Holoscan 5 extends the platform to real-time control
The demonstration coincides with NVIDIA’s introduction of Holoscan 5 at GTC Berlin. Holoscan 5 expands NVIDIA Holoscan from a perception-oriented software development kit into a platform that can also support ultra-low-latency, real-time control to create a unified runtime.
For medical technology developers, Holoscan 5 creates an opportunity to build products that combine high-performance sensing, real-time control, and agentic AI. Within the Holoscan ecosystem, medical imaging developers can establish a direct sensor-to-GPU path, while Altera FPGAs enable 100G, high-speed, low-latency sensor aggregation. Instead of relying solely on legacy proprietary platforms, developers can use software-defined architectures that expose more of the data path to modern algorithms and enable faster iteration across the device lifecycle.
Altera Holoscan Sensor Bridge Solutions
Altera’s Holoscan Sensor Bridge solutions are designed to make FPGAs the data plane for physical AI. Altera FPGAs can aggregate diverse sensor interfaces, perform protocol conversion, timestamping, preprocessing, early fusion, and stream data efficiently to NVIDIA GPUs through standardized Holoscan interfaces. Altera’s FPGA portfolio spans sensor-bridge solutions from 10G to 100G, including multiple reference designs with different MIPI and RF combinations for high-bandwidth AI applications.
By combining flexible FPGA fabric, high-speed Ethernet and direct sensor connectivity, Altera helps developers reduce CPU-mediated copies and scheduling variability while maintaining a deterministic, low-latency path from sensor to compute. This approach supports medical imaging, robotics, industrial automation and other physical AI applications in which sensor data must move quickly and predictably into AI and control workloads.
About Altera
Altera provides high-performance, programmable compute and connectivity solutions that enable the rapid adoption and continued advancement of transformative technologies across a wide range of advanced and AI-enabled systems. Altera is the largest pure-play FPGA provider with a full-spectrum portfolio serving applications ranging from data centers and communications networks to critical embedded systems.
Contacts
Media Contacts:
Stephen Gabriel
Altera Corporation
altera.newsroom@altera.com
