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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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20 years ago

NIOS II Low Power board?

Hi,

I'm very interested by the Nios II softcore, but I can't imagine the power consumtion of a such board and I need a very low power (batteries powered) and small design:

inside Altera device:

- NiosII

- 4 Uart RS232

- 2 USB port

- ether 10/100

- uclinux

hardware:

clock: < 25Mhz

flash

sram

interface for rs232 uart, USB, ether

* Any ideas about the expected power consumption range ? 100mw, 500mw, 1w...?

* Do you know if a such board alredy exist? (any suggestion are welcome)

* which Altera device is recommended for a very low power design with NiosII?

Thank you very much

Cold light

1 Reply

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor

    I personally do&#39;nt think Cyclone II is geared for low power applications... for a point of reference, the lowest I have seen my Ethernet uClinux board is 400mA at 5V, so that&#39;s way above what you are talking about. That&#39;s using LDOs though, so it&#39;s not terribly efficienet. Also, SRAM only wont cut it for using uClinux; you will need to go to hte power-hungry DRAM variants.