Intel Developers Looking To Get Nios II Backend In LLVM

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel Developers Looking To Get Nios II Backend In LLVM

Intel's compiler team is working on getting an Altera Nios II back-end mainlined within LLVM...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Altera-Nios-II-LLVM-Backend

[L_A_G]

Xilinx's Microblaze core used to have an LLVM backend, but it was removed way back in 2013 after it was left with no maintainer and fell into disrepair.

If there wasn't much demand for a Microblaze backend, how much demand can there be for a Nios II backend? Then again if I'm not mistaken Intel originally bought Altera to push for FPGAs in high performance/scientific computing so I guess this does actually make sense even if there isn't much of a customer base for it right now. Pure software processors like the NIOS II and Microblaze may not be the fastest tools for crunching numbers, but they're definitely very useful when for various management tasks when you're doing things like high speed signal processing on an FPGA.

[uid313]

Why use Nios II?
Probably better to go with RISC-V.

[L_A_G]

Why use Nios II?
Probably better to go with RISC-V.

NIOS II is a purpose built software processor so it's hugely configurable and as it's been around for some time it's really well documented and supported not to mention the easy of customize trough a simple to use software tool. No need to learn VHDL or Verilog or understand the intimate details of CPUs. You really don't use software processors for their pure speed or efficiency, you use them because of how well you can configure them to the application at hand and how you can use them to make it easier to work with ASICs you've set up on the same FPGA.

RISC-V is intended to be implemented in fixed silicon, software processors like Nios II aren't.