By hmimcu Altera Corporation and Wind River Corporation have announced Linux support for the Altera Nios II embedded processor. Embedded developers implementing Nios II processor-based products can use this Linux solution on Altera’s full line of FPGAs and HardCopy ASICs.
Wind River’s Nios II processor Linux solution is based on Linux 2.6 kernel technology, the GNU 4 tool chain and the Eclipse Wind River workbench development kit. The solution is based on industry-renowned Linux standards and tools, and supports Nios II instruction sets. The processor architecture and custom instructions can be implemented in the FPGA architecture, thereby improving system performance. lcd display tft
The Altera and Wind River Development Workbench provides software developers with a network-enabled integrated processor system reference design that starts Linux at power-up, enabling them to quickly start designing on FPGA-based platforms. The supporting hardware platform adopts the Cyclone III FPGA development kit, which is a processor subsystem design with comprehensive timing constraints and performance optimization, and provides Nios II/f core and a large number of general system peripherals, such as Ethernet, timer and UART, etc. . The hardware platform also has a matching Board Support Package (BSP) and a pre-built Linux kernel, allowing application developers to quickly start their application development in this familiar and stable environment. The same processor system reference design can be used on all FPGAs or HardCopy ASICs in the Altera family.
Market research firm Gartner considers the Nios II embedded processor to be the most widely used embedded processor in the FPGA industry when it comes to initial designs, with flexibility, ease of integration, and low cost enabling it to be used in systems. The Nios II embedded processor is a configurable, high-performance solution with performance up to 340 DMIPS in an FPGA, requiring only a few logic cells. Using the Altera Quartus II software toolkit, including the SOPC Builder tool, embedded developers can develop systems based on Altera devices with the most appropriate processors and peripherals.
Availability
Wind River offers Linux, a Nios II/f-based processor system reference design and a BSP for the Altera Cyclone III FPGA development kit.