28nm Cyclone V FPGAs offer secure voice communications

22nd May 2015

Altera Europe

Jordan Mulcare

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Altera has announced that its 28nm Cyclone V FPGAs have been chosen by Harris for its latest Falcon III wideband tactical radio. The radio, currently in production, has been designated by the U.S. NSA to be NSA Type-1 certified, enabling Harris to field the radio for secure voice and data communications.

Faced with weight, power and battery life constraints when designing applications for demanding military field operations, Harris chose Altera Cyclone V FPGAs to implement the radio modem and cryptography functionality. Altera’s Cyclone V FPGAs offer low power, small packaging and quick time-to-market, enabling Harris to deliver a smaller, lighter secure radio with a significantly longer battery life to soldiers in the field, ahead of the competition.

Altera also announced it has successfully completed the NSA Information Assurance Directorate (IAD) Secure Implementation Guidelines (SIG) document, which provides unified government recommendations on the use of security settings in Altera FPGA and SoC products and how these products can be used most securely to mitigate security threats in system designs.

Altera has completed the NSA’s IAD SIG process, which helps defend contractors develop and implement products adhering to the NSA’s guidelines. The NSA IAD SIG describes design and data security features unique to Altera 28nm FPGAs and SoCs and provides guidelines for security policies based on typical scenarios. Altera is also working with the NSA IAD on SIG documents for 14 and 20nm FPGAs and SoCs.