Altera's New Nios II Embedded Evaluation Kit Showcases Unique FPGA Design Capabilities For Embedded Systems

San Jose, Calif., November 26, 2007¾Altera Corporation today 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, audio and image processing, with just 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 Chris Balough, director of Altera’s software and embedded marketing. “We’ve included a rich set of applications from Altera and our partners to show the power of Nios II 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.  

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:

• 3C25 FPGA with 25K logic elements
• 32 Mbytes DDR SDRAM
• 1 Mbyte SSRAM
• 16 Mbytes 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
• PS2 interface
• RS-232

The kit also includes cables and accessories, a Nios II Evaluation Kit CD-ROM (with software tutorials and examples) and Altera’s complete Design Suite DVD featuring the Nios II EDS, Altera Megacore IP library, and Quartus II Web Edition Design Software.

Pricing and Availability

The Nios II Evaluation Kit, order code DK-N2EVAL-3C25N, is currently available through Altera®‘s online store at www.altera.com/buynioskitc3 and is priced at just US$399. The comprehensive evaluation kit is designed to promote solutions from a broad range of Nios II development partners. More information regarding the Nios II Embedded Evaluation Kit Cyclone III Version is available at www.altera.com/nios2eval, and for Altera’s complete portfolio of development kits www.altera.com/devkits.

About Altera

Altera programmable solutions enable system and semiconductor companies to rapidly and cost-effectively innovate, differentiate and win in their markets. Find out more at www.altera.com.