Altera has given us 5 of the company’s new Cyclone III Edition Nios II embedded evaluation kits. The Nios II evaluation kit is a feature-rich, low-cost platform that provides a fast and simple “hands on” way for embedded designers to assess the Nios II processor, SOPC Builder system design software and their custom applications.
Combining a Cyclone III Starter Board and a touch-screen LCD in a unique plexiglass case, the Nios II evaluation kit allows developers to launch example applications, such as networking and audio and image processing, with the touch of a finger. It also serves as an ideal development platform for software designers new to FPGA-based processors.
The kit includes the Nios II Embedded Design Suite (EDS), a complete design suite for embedded software development, and several tutorials and design examples (with full source code), making it easy to develop software for the Nios II embedded processor. Ten design examples from Altera and several embedded partners are included with the kit, showcasing many of the unique benefits gained by designing with FPGAs. These examples include hardware acceleration of image processing applications and a remote FPGA update design that demonstrates how FPGA developers can update hardware designs over the Internet to add new product features or deliver bug fixes.
The Nios II Embedded Evaluation Kit, Cyclone III Edition lets designers experiment with a wide range of applications by providing a diverse array of memory and I/O interfaces, including:
- Altera Cyclone III EP3C25 FPGA with 25K logic elements
- 32Mbyte DDR SDRAM
- 1Mbyte SSRAM
- 16Mbyte flash
- 10/100 Ethernet (PHY)
- 800 x 480 color touch-panel LCD
- SD card I/F (with SD flash card)
- Audio output
- Audio input
- Microphone input
- Composite video input
- VGA output
- PS/2 interface
- RS-232RS-232
The kit also includes cables and accessories, a Nios II Evaluation Kit CD-ROM (with software tutorials and examples) and the Altera Complete Design Suite DVD featuring the Nios II EDS, Altera MegaCore intellectual property (IP) library, and Quartus II Web Edition design software.