MathWorks partners with Altera to boost AI wireless design

MathWorks has announced a partnership with Altera to accelerate wireless development for Altera field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) through the use of artificial intelligence-based autoencoders.

This collaboration is set to aid wireless systems engineers in utilising AI technology to compress Channel State Information (CSI) data, resulting in a considerable reduction in fronthaul traffic and bandwidth demands. The implementation is aimed at supporting engineers working on developing 5G and 6G wireless communications systems, ultimately ensuring data integrity, reliability, and performance standards while keeping costs in check.

Mike Fitton, Vice President and General Manager of Vertical Markets at Altera, stated, "The collaboration between MathWorks and Altera enables organisations to harness the power of AI for a wide range of 5G and 6G wireless communications applications, from 5G RAN to advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS). By utilising our FPGA AI suite and MathWorks software, developers can streamline their workflow from algorithm design to hardware implementation, ensuring their AI-based wireless systems meet the rigorous demands of modern applications."

MathWorks offers a comprehensive suite of tools to enhance AI and wireless development, particularly for Altera FPGAs. The Deep Learning HDL Toolbox provides a dedicated solution for engineers focusing on deep learning deployments on FPGA hardware. Utilising HDL Coder, this toolbox allows users to build and deploy a high-performance Deep Learning Processor IP Core that supports standard networks and layers, providing enhanced performance and flexibility in wireless applications.

Houman Zarrinkoub, Principal Product Manager at MathWorks, commented, "AI-enabled compression is a powerful technology for the telecommunications industry. MathWorks software offers a robust foundation for AI and wireless development. By integrating our tools with Altera's FPGA technologies, wireless engineers can efficiently create high-performance AI applications and advanced 5G and 6G wireless systems."

The FPGA AI Suite supports the customisation of AI inference accelerator IP on Altera FPGAs, using the OpenVINO toolkit and pre-trained AI models from leading industry frameworks. This suite aids FPGA developers in integrating AI inference accelerator IP into their FPGA designs with the assistance of the Quartus Prime Software FPGA flows. The combination of MathWorks' Deep Learning Toolbox and the OpenVINO toolkit creates a streamlined process for optimising AI inference on Altera FPGAs.

Altera is a specialist in field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology, providing customisable solutions for applications across industries, including embedded, edge, network, enterprise and cloud. The company's latest FPGA offerings, including AgilexTM 5 series is industry's first FPGA with fabric infused with AI tensor blocks for increased compute density for embedded, edge computing and accelerate AI workloads.

Altera delivers a broad portfolio of custom logic solutions - FPGAs, SoCs, CPLDs together with software tools, intellectual property (IP), embedded processors offering versatile and efficient solutions for accelerating AI tasks, particularly in applications where customisation, deterministic, low latency, tight integration and energy efficiency are critical. The long product life cycles and the re-programmablility help future-proof AI designs with the fast-evolving AI trends.

MathWorks is the developer of mathematical computing software. MATLAB, the language of engineers and scientists, is a programming environment for algorithm development, data analysis, visualisation, and numeric computation. Simulink is a block diagram environment for simulation and Model-Based Design of multidomain and embedded engineering systems. Engineers and scientists worldwide rely on these products to accelerate the pace of discovery, innovation, and development in automotive, aerospace, communications, electronics, industrial automation, and other industries.