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Tera: Altera’s Innovative AI Assistant for FPGA Engineers

In an exciting development for FPGA engineers, Altera has launched Tera, an AI search and chat assistant designed to enhance customer support and improve the efficiency of design processes. Powered by Vectara, a platform specializing in reliable AI applications, Tera will provide immediate access to technical information, making it easier for engineers to navigate the complexities of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs).

An AI Solution Tailored for Engineers

Engineers working with FPGAs require a wealth of information throughout the design cycle, often accessing content scattered across multiple resources. Tera streamlines this process by aggregating Altera's technical knowledge into a single, cohesive AI-driven interface. This means that engineers can find relevant technical information without having to sift through numerous portals or data repositories.

Bob Siller, Senior Director of Corporate Marketing at Altera, emphasizes the transformation that Tera brings to customer support: “Our customers design complex systems, and they need answers they can trust. Tera alters expectations for FPGA customers by integrating Altera’s technical knowledge directly into the customer experience.” Notably, Tera provides source links alongside its responses, allowing engineers to verify the information and ensure accuracy in their designs.

Key Features of Tera

Tera boasts a range of capabilities aimed at making the lives of engineers easier:

• - Grounded, Source-Linked Answers: Tera delivers answers based on Altera’s own content, directly linking to source materials so engineers can easily validate the information.
• - Comprehensive Knowledge Base: The AI assistant taps into various technical documents, including datasheets, user guides, and training resources, providing relevant information tailored to the engineer’s needs.
• - Technical Content Interpretation: Tera goes beyond text, interpreting diagrams and tables from technical documents to deliver comprehensive technical insights.
• - Access-Aware Responses: Users can receive customized answers based on their access rights, ensuring that all responses are relevant to each engineer's situation.
• - On-Demand Assistance: Tera is available to provide answers whenever engineers require them, from initial evaluations to debugging phases.

Making Design Processes More Efficient

The introduction of Tera marks a significant move towards reducing the time engineers spend searching for information, allowing them to focus on the actual design work. This is particularly beneficial for those evaluating or designing systems using Altera’s FPGAs, as Tera is designed to enhance productivity and facilitate a smoother workflow in technical design tasks.

Tera is now available on altera.com, showcasing the company’s commitment to improving customer experience through innovative AI technology.

A Trusted AI Platform

Creating an AI assistant capable of providing reliable answers in a highly technical field requires a sophisticated approach. Altera’s partnership with Vectara enhances this capability, focusing on providing accurate, grounded responses while considering customer entitlements. Vectara's advanced platform ensures that the information delivered is not only accurate but also tailored to meet the needs of regulated and technical enterprises.

Tallat Shafaat, co-founder and CEO of Vectara, asserts, “Engineers can't afford an AI that guesses. Altera has set a high bar for responsible customer-facing AI, showcasing what’s achievable through a governed AI platform.”

About Altera and Vectara

Altera specializes in providing high-performance, programmable compute and connectivity solutions that facilitate the development of AI-enabled systems across a variety of applications. As the largest pure-play FPGA provider, Altera supports a wide range of industries including data centers and critical embedded systems.

Meanwhile, Vectara focuses on developing trusted, hallucination-resistant AI agents through a retrieval-augmented generation model. Their goal is to empower enterprises to deploy AI that is firmly based on their data, whether in SaaS, virtual private cloud (VPC), or on-premises environments.

Tera represents a significant advancement in how engineers approach FPGA design, and as AI technology continues to evolve, Altera is at the forefront of integrating these advancements into practical customer support solutions.