Nios II Processor End Markets
Built around a general-purpose RISC CPU, the Nios® II processor addresses a wide range of embedded applications over a wide variety of end markets, including:
Nios II processors are extremely versatile, providing a customizable feature set of processors, peripherals, and interfaces, so that you can create the exact fit for any application—even creating microprocessor configurations that aren’t available as off-the-shelf products.
Automotive
 Integration and reliability are the name of the game in automotive markets. Automotive electronic design teams are motivated to integrate as many design components as possible onto a single chip to lower costs, simplify designs, and increase product reliability.
Blaupunkt
"We were able to reduce design complexity by replacing multiple standard components with a single Cyclone device hosting a Nios II embedded processor, which eased our development effort and increased our product quality and reliability."
Georg Sandhaus
Director of System Engineering
Some common uses for Nios II processors in automotive applications are:
- Graphics processors with hardware acceleration
- Central gateway controllers
- Driver assistance systems
- Audio processing
Learn more about using the flexibility and performance benefits of the Nios II processor to create an exact-fit processing solution for your next design. Also see Altera’s automotive end-market solutions.
Broadcast
The broadcast industry has a wide range of requirements, but performance is near the top of that list. Nios II processors give broadcast design engineers a flexible processor solution—one that can be configured to meet the strictest performance requirements while also optimizing for cost.
Barco
"In each Networked Broadcast Monitoring System, a single Stratix II FPGA performs critical compute-intensive video scaling, high-speed network interfacing, and control functions via a Nios II embedded processor. This integration of several components worth of ASSPs and an off-the-shelf processor into one device increases the compactness, cost-effectiveness, and reliability of our offering."
Peter Bussens
Product Manager
Learn more about using Nios II processors to optimize performance in embedded systems without raising the clock frequency or increasing risk, or read more about Altera’s offering in the broadcast end-market solutions.
Consumer
The consumer end market is exceptionally cost-sensitive and is thus addressed by low-cost devices such as Altera® Cyclone® series FPGAs and HardCopy® ASICs. The Nios II/e “economy” CPU core has been optimized for the lowest possible cost.
Digital video and audio content drive much of the technology requirements in the consumer market. The combination of the cost-effectiveness of Cyclone series FPGAs and the tremendous versatility of Nios II processors form an ideal platform for applications involving image and audio processing, such as the Merlin embedded industrial controller from Seventech.
Seventech
"The ability to develop custom instructions for the Nios II processor allowed us to transcend the limitations of traditional embedded architectures and offer our customers a truly unique solution."
Salvo De Luca
Hardware and HDL Lead Designer
Nios II processors are ideally implemented in low-cost Cyclone series devices for high-performance, cost-efficient processing solutions. For truly high-volume products, you can implement your Nios II designs in HardCopy ASICs at no additional licensing cost. Learn more about the flexibility benefits of the Nios II processor, or read more about Altera’s consumer end-market offerings.
Medical
For medical applications (which must typically be supported for many years), obsolescence can be a major design concern. Developers in this market often sacrifice flexibility and performance to find a popular, general-purpose processor that is less likely to become obsolete. The ideal solution for many long-life medical applications is soft processors with configurable feature sets, such as the Nios II processor.
Embedded developers in medical markets love the versatility of the Nios II processor, which allows them to build exact-fit systems that don’t compromise on features or performance while also protecting their software investment. Nios II processors are customizable to include only the features and peripherals that are needed in any given design and provide the processor intellectual property (IP) that can be easily re-targeted to a newer FPGA, if the need arises.
Learn more about Altera’s medical end-market products. Find out how Nios II processors help you to lengthen your product’s lifespan.
Military and Aerospace
 Some end markets, such as military and aerospace, are particularly sensitive to product lifespan. Many end products in this market are intended to ship for ten years or more between design cycles. Generally, off-the shelf processors cannot offer the guarantee of non-obsolescence over that period of time, but Nios II processors allow you to easily re-target to a new FPGA, if necessary, and protect your software investment, making the Nios II processors obsolescence-proof.
Another common requirement of the military and aerospace industry is the need to upgrade a product after it has shipped, adding features and lengthening a product’s effective market life. More than a few designers have discovered that by using Nios II processors they can more easily manage in-field remote upgrades. Upgrading a product to expand its feature-set or to fix a bug is easy when you have a Nios II processor onboard to manage the hardware and software configuration images.
Ultra Electronics
"The high capacity and exceptional digital signal processing performance of Stratix II devices combined with Nios II processors enabled us to add firmware-based support for additional waveforms, which extends our product lifetime."
Stéphan Charbonneau
Radio Products Manager
Does your application require D0-178B support for avionics systems? Check out the MicroC/OS-II real-time operating system from Micrium, a trusted Altera embedded software partner. You can learn more about the life cycle benefits of the Nios II processor, and how you can avoid costly processor obsolescence. For more general information on this end market, see the Altera military and aerospace end-market solutions.
Test and Measurement
Test and measurement products can also take advantage of in-field upgrades. If a manufacturer can upgrade in the field to add features or fix bugs, they can effectively lengthen a product’s market life. Nios II processors are easily employed to manage these remote upgrades by managing the hardware and software configuration images.
Nios II processors are also commonly employed in multiprocessor and FPGA coprocessing systems for applications that require the flexibility to add peripherals and features late in the design cycle.
Wireless
Managing power consumption is one of the major challenges of the wireless market. When power is your primary concern, you must carefully analyze every component that is added to your design. In addition, it can be a conflicting goal to meet your performance requirements while also limiting high clock rates. FPGAs let you integrate many functions, such as your system processor and peripherals, onto one chip.
You can configure a Nios II processor system to contain only the peripherals and interfaces that are necessary for any particular design, including custom peripherals in the FPGA. Moreover, custom instructions and hardware accelerators can be incorporated to increase the amount of processing performed per clock cycle, increasing performance without raising the clock frequency.
Tait
"Altera products provide us with the flexibility to configure combinations of complex embedded and signal processing functions that are not available in a single off-the-shelf processor solution."
Tony Berggren
Radio Architectures Technology Leader
Panasonic Mobile Communications' 3.5G Network Base Transceiver Station required a combination of integrated high-speed transceivers and microprocessor functionality that could only be met with Altera’s Stratix® GX device and Nios embedded processor.
Panasonic Mobile Communications
"The maturity and excellent development tools for the Nios processor convinced us that it was ideal for handling the call control and bus control functions in our BTS baseband system. By enabling us to combine the transceiver and processor capability into a single device, Altera delivered us a solution that met our aggressive cost target, and allowed us to meet a very ambitious product development schedule."
Masakazu Shobu
General Manager
Node-B Development Group
Learn more about using the Nios II C-to-Hardware (C2H) acceleration compiler to accelerate embedded software without increasing clock frequency.
Wireline
Networking applications have real-time performance requirements that have long benefited from the processing capabilities and the high data-bandwidth potential of FPGA fabrics. However, designing entirely in RTL reduces design flexibility and introduces risks that can be avoided. More and more networking applications are finding performance and flexibility by adding processors inside the FPGA and partitioning tasks across the hardware/software line to find the optimal tradeoffs for each application.
Alcatel
"We have found the Nios processor to be a powerful, reliable platform for developing and implementing complex algorithms. The combination of microprocessor functionality and programmable logic allows designers to explore the optimum implementation of digital functions."
Santo Maggio
Project Leader
Optical Multi-Service Node Lab
Learn more about hardware acceleration using Nios II processors.
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