Altera - Nios® II

The Nios® II Embedded Evaluation Kit, Cyclone® III Edition makes evaluating Altera’s embedded solutions easier than ever. A dozen different processor systems targeting the low-cost, low-power Cyclone III FPGA can be evaluated by simply using the LCD color touch panel to scroll through and load your demo of choice.

These processor systems showcase the unique benefits of FPGA-based processors such as reducing bill of material (BOM) costs by integrating powerful graphics engines within the FPGA, reducing operating costs by upgrading your system over the Internet, or increasing system performance while reducing power using C-to-Hardware (C2H) acceleration.

The Nios II Embedded Evaluation kit, Cyclone III Edition comes with a comprehensive suite for software development — the Nios II Embedded Design Suite (EDS) — as well as sample Nios II processor systems that include full source code.

Get the latest ready-to-run SD card demos by downloading them from this site and adding them to the SD card that comes with the kit. You can also build your own ready-to-run SD card demos and share them via the Nios II Embedded Evaluation Kit Community Wiki.

The Altera® Nios II Embedded Evaluation Kit, Cyclone III Edition includes a full-featured field-programmable gate array (FPGA) development board, LCD Multimedia High Speed Mezzanine Card (HSMC), hardware and software development tools, documentation, and accessories needed to begin embedded and system on a programmable chip (SOPC) designs using FPGAs.

The development board includes an Altera Cyclone III FPGA and comes preconfigured with an FPGA hardware reference design stored in flash memory as well as several Ready-to-Run demonstration applications stored on the SD-Card Flash provided. Hardware designers can use the FPGA reference design as a platform to build complex embedded systems. Software developers can use the hardware reference design plus sample software applications as a starting point for their own applications.

The Nios II Evaluation Kit, Cyclone III Edition is composed of the Cyclone III FPGA Starter Kit and an LCD/VGA HSMC daughtercard and features:

Cyclone III Starter Board

Cyclone III EP3C25F324 FPGA
Configuration

Embedded USB-Blaster™ circuitry (includes an Altera® EPM3128A CPLD) allowing download of FPGA configuration files via your USB port

Power and analog devices from Linear Technology

Switching power supply LTM4603EV-1
Switching and step-down regulators LTC3413, LT1959

Memory

32 Mbytes of DDR SDRAM
1 Mbyte of synchronous SRAM
16 Mbytes of Intel P30/P33 flash

Clocking

50-MHz, on-board oscillator

Switches and indicators

Six push buttons total, four user controlled
Seven LEDs total, four user controlled

LCD daughtercard

Color LCD touch-screen display

800 x 480 resolution

24-bit CD-quality audio CODEC with line-in, line-out, and microphone-in jacks
10/100 Ethernet physical layer/media access control (PHY/MAC)
Connectors

VGA output
Composite TV-in
Audio-out, audio-in, and microphone-in
SD card
Serial connector (RS-232 DB9 port)
PS/2
Ethernet connector (RJ-45)

Nios II Evaluation Kit CD-ROM

Example applications

Application selector
Picture viewer
Mandelbrot acceleration with the Nios II C2H compiler
Web server/remote FPGA configuration

Hardware tutorials

Create an FPGA design in one hour
Build a 32-bit soft processor system inside an FPGA

Software tutorials

My First Software Application

Complete documentation

Quick start guide
User guide
Reference manual
Board schematic, layout, and bill of materials
Product and partner information

Cables and accessories

128-Mbyte secure digital card and USB-to-secure digital card adapter
USB cable
9-V power supply
International power cords
Ethernet (RJ-45) cable (7 ft.)
Ethernet crossover adapter

Altera Complete Design Suite DVD (free):

Quartus II Web Edition (FPGA design software)
ModelSim®-Altera Web Edition (FPGA simulation software from ModelSim)
Nios II Embedded Design Suite (32-bit microprocessor software)
MicroC/OS-II real-time operating system evaluation
Nios II C-to-Hardware acceleration compiler evaluation
NicheStack TCP/IP Network Stack - Nios II Edition evaluation
SD/MMC SPI IP Core evaluation licensing available through El Camino
MegaCore® IP Library (library of intellectual property cores)