Industry's Leading Soft-Core Processor Delivers the Greatest Flexibility, Highest Performance, and Lowest Cost
May 18, 2004 - Altera Corporation announced the immediate availability of the Nios® II family of 32-bit RISC embedded processors. Altera's second-generation soft-core embedded processor delivers more than 200 DMIPS in performance and can cost as little as 35 cents to implement in Altera's FPGAs. Because the Nios II processor is a soft core, developers can choose from an unlimited combination of system configurations to meet their performance and cost targets without having to consider an ASIC for their system-level designs.The Ultimate in Flexibility
The Nios II family consists of three soft CPU cores; one for maximum system performance, one optimized for minimum logic usage, and one that strikes a balance between the two. All cores are 100 percent code compatible, letting designers change CPUs as their system requirements change without impacting their existing software investment. Building on the success of the previous generation, the Nios II family provides significantly higher performance with a fraction of the resources. Additionally, the Nios II processor features a robust software development suite that includes a compiler, integrated development environment (IDE), JTAG debugger, real-time operating system (RTOS), and TCP/IP stack.
Combined with Altera's low-cost CycloneTM series and high-performance Stratix® series of FPGAs, and HardCopyTM structured ASIC family, the Nios II embedded processor offers unmatched flexibility in price, performance, and features.
Pricing and Availability
Nios development kits featuring Altera's Stratix and Cyclone FPGAs can be ordered immediately with the Nios II family of processors and development tools. Customers with an active Nios subscription will automatically receive the Nios II processor and Nios II IDE upgrade.
