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Altera_Forum
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15 years ago

NiosII is slow? Or something I am doing wrong.

Hi all, I am playing with Cyclone II chip. It is custom board and there is ATMEGA16 running at 12MHz and FPGA with master clock 50MHz. FPGA is translating data from internal dualport memory ...
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Altera_Forum
Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
15 years ago

Yup Levas, Kevin is right. It all comes down to a true apples to apples comparison. Otherwise, you're deluding yourself...and others. Be sure that you're including all details, not just the ones you're familiar with...

The Mandelbrot site is interesting. There's a comparable one (http://www.altera.com/support/examples/nios2/exm-c2h-mandelbrot.html) on Altera's site. In this example, the Nios II (with C2H generated hardware acceleration) blows away most any normal CPU, including the one on your desktop PC.

That's the real strength of using softcore CPUs in FPGAs. Don't like your current performance? Well, because you're now in the squishy software/hardware world of FPGAs, you just gave yourself something beyond hand optimized assembly to reach your goals.

Cheers,

--slacker