Altera designs highlight hardware acceleration, remote hardware update

BANGALORE, INDIA: Altera Corp. has announced availability of its new Nios II Embedded Evaluation Kit, Cyclone III Edition. 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.

"This kit is designed to quickly and dramatically showcase the capabilities of embedded computing on advanced, low-cost FPGAs," said Louie Leung, marketing director at Altera, Asia Pacific. "We’ve included a rich set of applications from Altera and our partners to show the power of Nios II processors, enabling designers to quickly put these designs to work within their own systems."

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.