Forum Discussion

Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
16 years ago

I want to know the max speed of NIOS ii based on cyclone iii EP3C120N780C

I have a DK-DSP-3C120N KIT,the NIOS II clock can not exceed 100mhz.The highest speed of NIOS II /f is now just 100mhz.The C program always dead when the clock exceed 100mhz.I want to working at least...
Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
16 years ago

Are you meeting timing when you re-compile for a higher speed? Also are you constraining your design?

Reaching 167MHz is possible on Cyclone III but I wouldn't expect to get it running any faster than that. Instead of cranking the CPU clock speed up I would invest some time looking for bottlenecks and determining what exactly needs to run fast. Then you can optimize or offload algorithms into dedicated hardware. This should result in lower power, more processing efficiency, and typically more scaling (once you hit the limits of the silicon you can't turn up the clock speed anymore).