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5.3. Nios II/s Core
The Nios II/s standard core is designed for small core size. On-chip logic and memory
resources are conserved at the expense of execution performance. The Nios II/s core
uses approximately 20% less logic than the Nios II/f core, but execution performance
also drops by roughly 40%. Intel FPGA designed the Nios II/s core with the following
design goals in mind:
•
Do not cripple performance for the sake of size.
•
Remove hardware features that have the highest ratio of resource usage to
performance impact.
The resulting core is optimal for cost-sensitive, medium-performance applications.
This includes applications with large amounts of code and/or data, such as systems
running an operating system in which performance is not the highest priority.
5.3.1. Overview
The Nios II/s core:
•
Has an instruction cache, but no data cache
•
Can access up to 2 GB of external address space
•
Supports optional tightly-coupled memory for instructions
•
Employs a 5-stage pipeline
•
Performs static branch prediction
•
Provides hardware multiply, divide, and shift options to improve arithmetic
performance
•
Supports the addition of custom instructions
•
Supports the JTAG debug module
•
Supports optional JTAG debug module enhancements, including hardware
breakpoints and real-time trace
The following sections discuss the noteworthy details of the Nios II/s core
implementation. This document does not discuss low-level design issues or
implementation details that do not affect Nios II hardware or software designers.
5.3.2. Arithmetic Logic Unit
The Nios II/s core provides several ALU options to improve the performance of
multiply, divide, and shift operations.
5. Nios II Core Implementation Details
NII-PRG | 2018.04.18
Nios II Processor Reference Guide
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