Altera announced on September 8, 2026, that it is shipping Agilex 3 and Agilex 5 field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) with secure boot based on post-quantum cryptography. The San Jose, California, company said customers can implement the feature with a software flow in Quartus Prime Pro Edition 26.1.1, its design software.
An FPGA is a chip with logic circuits that can be reconfigured after manufacture by loading a configuration file called a bitstream. In secure boot, the chip checks a digital signature on that configuration before running it, so it loads only code signed with a trusted key.
Altera did not name the post-quantum algorithm or its parameter set in the announcement or in a companion blog post, so buyers bound by a specific standard cannot tell from either whether the feature meets it. A parameter set is one of several fixed configurations of an algorithm that trade key and signature sizes against security strength.
What Altera announced
Altera said the post-quantum secure boot helps authenticate trusted device configurations and protects long-life systems against future threats from quantum computers. The chips’ Secure Device Manager, the block that handles their security functions, also provides bitstream encryption, anti-tamper protection, key management, and platform attestation, the company said.
“Customers building long-life systems need confidence that the hardware they choose today can adapt to tomorrow’s security requirements,” Mike Fitton, Altera’s vice president of product and corporate marketing, said in the announcement. Altera said its post-quantum FPGAs are designed to support further software and firmware security enhancements as post-quantum requirements evolve.
Both families include system-on-chip versions that pair programmable logic with an integrated Arm processor subsystem on one device. In a September 2025 release, Altera said all devices in its Agilex 5 D-Series incorporate post-quantum secure boot capability and that customers could start designing with selected D-Series parts. In the new announcement, Altera named both the Agilex 3 and Agilex 5 families and said the devices are shipping.
Altera has been 51% owned by the investment firm Silver Lake since September 2025, when Silver Lake completed its purchase of that stake from Intel. Intel kept the remaining 49%.
Algorithms and parameter sets
NIST published ML-DSA, a lattice-based algorithm formerly called CRYSTALS-Dilithium, as its post-quantum signature standard FIPS 204 on August 13, 2024. The same day, it published SLH-DSA, a stateless hash-based algorithm formerly called SPHINCS+, as FIPS 205. NIST defined several parameter sets in each standard.
NIST specified two further schemes, LMS and XMSS, in Special Publication 800-208 in 2020. Both are stateful hash-based signatures, meaning the signer must keep track of which one-time keys it has already used.
The National Security Agency sets the algorithms for U.S. national security systems in its Commercial National Security Algorithm Suite 2.0, known as CNSA 2.0. In its CNSA 2.0 guidance, the agency listed ML-DSA-87, the strongest ML-DSA parameter set, for digital signatures in any use case at all classification levels, including firmware and software signing. It also wrote that it recommends FIPS-validated LMS or XMSS signatures for signing firmware and software.
Altera did not mention CNSA 2.0 in the announcement or say whether its secure boot uses any of these schemes.
Deadlines for national security systems
In the same guidance, updated in December 2024, the NSA wrote that under CNSSP 15, a Committee on National Security Systems policy, all new acquisitions for those systems must comply with CNSA 2.0 by January 1, 2027. The agency also wrote that equipment and services that cannot support CNSA 2.0 must be phased out by December 31, 2030, unless otherwise noted.
Update, November 12, 2026: On September 16, Lattice Semiconductor announced its Mach-N2 FPGAs and listed ML-DSA, LMS, and XMSS for authentication and ML-KEM for key exchange.
Update, November 14, 2026: In the settings reference for version 26.3 of its Quartus Prime Pro design software, dated October 30, Altera lists three signature algorithms for signing bitstreams and certificates on Agilex 3 and Agilex 5 PQC devices: ECDSA, ML-DSA, and “Hybrid LMS ML-DSA.” ECDSA is the default. The page gives no parameter sets.
