Altera has added post-quantum cryptography (PQC) to its Agilex 3 and Agilex 5 FPGAs, aiming to protect the boot process and the designs stored on devices that can remain in service for many years. The company is already shipping compatible chips and offers support through Quartus Prime Pro Edition 26.1.1. The move is especially relevant for industrial systems, telecommunications, defense, infrastructure, and edge devices, where replacing hardware to address a cryptographic shift can be costly or impractical.
Altera’s post-quantum cryptography in 20 seconds
- Agilex 3 and Agilex 5 now support post-quantum secure boot.
- The protection is integrated with the FPGAs’ Secure Device Manager.
- Altera wants to prepare long-lifecycle devices against future quantum-computer attacks.
- The reprogrammable architecture allows firmware and cryptographic functions to be updated later.
- Compatible devices are already available.
The announcement doesn’t mean quantum computers can currently break the cryptography protecting most systems in any practical way. The problem Altera is trying to solve is different: hardware designed today may still be in service once the cryptographic landscape has changed.
An FPGA installed in a base station, an industrial system, aerospace equipment, or defense infrastructure can remain operational for a decade or more. Refresh cycles look very different from those of a conventional server or a personal computer.
That means planning for algorithms that are secure today but might not stay secure over the equipment’s service life.
The immediate goal is protecting the FPGA’s boot process
Altera’s main new feature is PQC-enabled Secure Boot, a mechanism that authenticates the configuration loaded during the device’s startup using cryptography resistant to quantum attacks.
This process carries particular weight on an FPGA.
Unlike a conventional processor with a fixed architecture, an FPGA contains logic blocks whose configuration determines the circuit the device will implement. That configuration is stored in a file usually called a bitstream.
Protecting that bitstream is essential both for system security and for the manufacturer’s intellectual property.
The process can be simplified as follows:
| Element | Function |
|---|---|
| Bitstream | Defines the FPGA’s logic configuration |
| Secure Boot | Verifies that the configuration is legitimate |
| Cryptographic signature | Authenticates the code/configuration |
| Secure Device Manager | Manages the device’s security functions |
| Bitstream encryption | Protects intellectual property and configuration |
| PUF | Generates keys physically tied to the device |
| Attestation | Verifies the platform’s status and identity |
| PQC | Prepares authentication against future quantum attacks |
If an attacker manages to modify the configuration an FPGA loads, the problem can sit below the operating system itself and below much of the security software installed afterward.
That’s why secure boot tries to establish a chain of trust from the earliest stages of initialization.
Adding PQC extends that protection with a future threat in mind: that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could compromise certain public-key algorithms currently used to authenticate software and firmware.
Why quantum computing threatens RSA and ECC
Concern around post-quantum cryptography centers especially on public-key systems.
Algorithms such as RSA and elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) rely on mathematical problems that are extremely hard to solve efficiently with today’s classical computers.
A sufficiently large, fault-tolerant quantum computer could use Shor’s algorithm to solve these problems far more efficiently.
That would affect technologies used for digital signatures, key exchange, certificates, and authentication.
It doesn’t mean all of today’s cryptography would become useless overnight.
Symmetric algorithms such as AES are in a different position. Grover’s quantum algorithm can theoretically reduce the effort needed for an exhaustive search, but using sufficiently large key sizes keeps meaningful security margins.
The shift to PQC is therefore focused especially on replacing public-key mechanisms vulnerable to Shor’s algorithm — a transition already underway across enterprise software stacks as well as hardware like Altera’s FPGAs.
The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published its first major post-quantum cryptography standards in 2024, including ML-KEM, ML-DSA, and SLH-DSA, intended for key encapsulation mechanisms and digital signatures respectively.
For hardware makers, the difficulty isn’t just implementing an algorithm. They also need to be able to evolve as standards change, new cryptanalysis emerges, or authorities update their recommendations.
This is where FPGAs have a particularly useful trait: they can be reprogrammed.
Reprogrammability can be an advantage as algorithms keep evolving
A fixed-function integrated circuit is largely locked in by the decisions made during manufacturing.
An FPGA allows part of its logic to be modified later.
Altera uses precisely this capability as one of its arguments for Agilex 3 and Agilex 5. The company says its devices are built to incorporate future software and firmware improvements as post-quantum cryptography requirements evolve.
That doesn’t automatically make an FPGA immune to future vulnerabilities. It does provide an added ability to adapt implementations without necessarily replacing the entire device.
For systems with long lifecycles, that can be especially relevant.
| System type | Typical hardware lifespan | Interest in cryptographic updates |
|---|---|---|
| Consumer PC | Relatively short | Medium |
| Server | Periodic refreshes | High |
| Industrial equipment | Can exceed a decade | Very high |
| Telecommunications | Long cycles | Very high |
| Aerospace | Very long cycles | Very high |
| Defense | Very long cycles | Very high |
| Critical infrastructure | Long-lasting deployments | Very high |
The figures in the table are indicative: they depend on the manufacturer, the application, and each organization’s refresh policies.
The issue becomes especially delicate when a device is hard to physically replace. Swapping out a server in a data center is a relatively routine operation. Updating hardware installed in remote industrial infrastructure, a vehicle, or certain aerospace systems can be far more complex.
Secure Device Manager protects more than just the post-quantum algorithm
PQC is the new part of this announcement, but Agilex already has a broader security architecture built around the Secure Device Manager (SDM).
Altera’s capabilities include bitstream encryption, key management, physical anti-tampering mechanisms, built-in cryptographic cores, keys based on Physically Unclonable Functions (PUF), and platform attestation features.
A PUF takes advantage of physical variations inherent to a semiconductor’s manufacturing process to derive characteristics tied to one specific device.
The goal is to have cryptographic material tied to the hardware itself, rather than relying solely on storing a conventional key in memory.
Attestation, in turn, provides evidence about a platform’s identity and state before it’s trusted.
These technologies complement secure boot.
A protected system needs to verify that the configuration it’s about to run is legitimate, protect the keys used in that verification, and prevent an attacker from simply extracting secrets directly from the device.
Physical security also matters in many of the markets Altera targets with Agilex.
An FPGA inside a data center is protected by the facility’s physical controls. A device sitting in industrial machinery, telecommunications infrastructure, or field-deployed equipment can be far more exposed to tampering.
The problem of harvesting today to decrypt tomorrow
The shift toward post-quantum cryptography also responds to a threat known as Harvest Now, Decrypt Later (HNDL).
The scenario involves capturing encrypted information today even if the attacker can’t decrypt it yet.
The data is stored for years while waiting for technology capable of breaking the cryptographic mechanism used.
This risk is especially relevant for information that must stay confidential for long periods: trade secrets, government information, certain personal data, or defense-related communications.
The secure boot case adds another dimension.
A product built in 2026 may use signatures whose security is adequate at launch but that remain installed many years later. If the authentication mechanism becomes vulnerable during the device’s service life, the chain of trust could need an update.
That’s why the migration to PQC doesn’t start once a quantum computer capable of breaking RSA at scale exists. The transition has to happen earlier, especially for products that take years to design, certify, manufacture, and replace.
Agilex 3 and Agilex 5 already carry the support
Altera says PQC-compatible Agilex 3 and Agilex 5 chips are already shipping.
Development support arrives via Quartus Prime Pro Edition 26.1.1, which includes the workflow needed to implement these protections.
Agilex 3 targets designs that need to combine programmable logic, processing, and connectivity while keeping cost and power constraints in check. Agilex 5 scales up toward applications with higher performance and capacity needs.
The company positions these families for industrial and edge applications, automation, robotics, telecommunications, data centers, aerospace, and defense, among other markets.
Commercial availability is an important distinction from announcements that simply promise future post-quantum cryptography support. In this case, Altera says the compatible hardware and corresponding tools have been available since September 8, 2026.
That doesn’t mean every Agilex-based design is automatically protected against future quantum threats, either.
Security will depend on how the device is configured, which algorithms and keys are used, how the update cycle is managed, and which external elements are part of the chain of trust.
Post-quantum cryptography also doesn’t fix software vulnerabilities, configuration errors, key leaks, physical attacks, or failures in other components.
What changes with Agilex 3 and Agilex 5 is the ability to build that cryptographic transition into a very low layer of the system: the mechanism responsible for checking which configuration is allowed to boot on the hardware.
For systems meant to stay deployed for many years, that preparation may matter more than defending against a quantum computer that doesn’t yet exist at the necessary scale. The question for engineers isn’t only whether today’s cryptography is secure in 2026, but whether it will still be secure when the device is still running ten or fifteen years from now.
via: Altera
