Read/Write Access in Nios II

In the nios II IDE, Click Window->Preferences->NIOS II. Then select the "Generate objdump file". Now recompile your software project. When it finishes it will give you a ".objdump" file which contains a complete listing of the assembly code created for your project. You can find your functions and see what instructions are being executed. This should give you an idea of how many cycles it will take to execute. For example, that little printf statement you've got in there is going to eat up a ton of cycles. Another interesting excercise is to change your software project to compile in "Release" mode instead of "Debug" and watch how the timing changes.