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Altera Corporation, a provider of programmable logic solutions and Wind River, a company that specializes in device software optimization, have announced the availability of Linux support for Altera's (News - Alert) Nios II embedded processor.

 

Altera’s Nios II processors provides its customers complete flexibility, whenever required with the perfect fit of CPUs, peripherals, memory interfaces, and custom hardware accelerators. This allows the users to meet the unique demand of every new design cycle. The Nios II embedded processor is deployed in systems because of its flexibility, ease of integration and low cost. The Nios II embedded processor is a configurable, high-performance solution that delivers up to 340 DMIPS of performance in FPGAs.

 

The current announcement on the availability of Linux support is aimed to allow embedded developers deploying products based on the Nios II processor to use this Linux solution in all Altera's portfolio of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) and HardCopy ASICs.

 

"Together, Altera and Wind River (News - Alert) have brought Linux support to the Nios II embedded processor on FPGAs," said Mike Langlois, general manager of networking solutions at Wind River.

 

"Our customers can leverage a flexible hardware and software solution to create and bring to market faster, highly differentiated systems. The fact that the Nios II processor can run on all of Altera's FPGAs and HardCopy ASICs to enable a broad spectrum of solutions is well-matched to the needs of our customers who are looking to differentiate on price and performance," said Langlois.

 

Wind River's Linux solution for the Nios II processor is based on Linux 2.6 kernel technology, the GNU 4 tool chain and the Eclipse-based Wind River Workbench Development Suite.

 

The Altera and Wind River development framework, as stated by both the companies offers an integrated, network-enabled processor-system reference design that boots Linux on power-up. It provides software developers a fast start on an FPGA-based platform.

 

Implemented on a Cyclone III FPGA Development Kit, the underlying hardware platform is a fully timing-constrained and performance-optimized processor subsystem design with a Nios II/f core and a number of common system peripherals such as Ethernet, timer and UART.

 

Moreover, a matching board support package (BSP) and a pre-built Linux kernel for this hardware platform will allow the application developers a flexible environment to initiate their application development effort.

 

The same processor system reference design can target any FPGA or HardCopy ASIC in Altera's product portfolio.

 

"As more customers adopt FPGA platforms to create product differentiation in ever bigger and more sophisticated systems, their software development needs increase and evolve," said Danny Biran, senior vice president of product and corporate marketing at Altera.

 

"Our relationship with Wind River provides us with a partner who can support the broad and diverse needs of our global customers, and whose breadth and depth of software expertise complements our hardware expertise," added Biran.

 

Wind River officials confirmed the immediate availability of the Linux distribution, a Nios II/f-based processor-system reference design, and a BSP for the Altera Cyclone III FPGA Development Kit from the company.