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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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18 years ago

Alternatives to NIOS

I'm getting a bit frustrated with NIOS and I'd like to consider alternative soft-cores. NIOS seems to be very powerful for OS implementations, but not too efficient for small microcontroller-like app...
Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
18 years ago

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I'm surprised.

NIOS II should work quitte well with out any OS involved.

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I didn't mean NIOS doesn't work well without an OS. I meant that NIOS seems to be designed for being efficient in big projects (where you would usually use an OS).

NIOS seems to be designed mainly for the /s and /f cores. I want a smaller processor. I want something with an area size similar to the /e core, but not at the expense of 6 clocks or more per instruction. This is almost ridiculous for RISC. It is, of course, just a consequence of NIOS being designed around a deep pipeline. Again, great for the bigger cores, but too bad for the /e core. A processor designed from the ground for a shorter pipeline would be much more efficient on small cores (but of course, not as much efficient as NIOS for bigger cores).