Altera and its Embedded Alliance Program offer a range of software development tools, hardware development tools, and development kits that include everything you need to quickly and easily create and implement your design.
Figure 1. Development Tools to Accelerate Embedded Design
Software Development Tools
Altera offers the Nios® II Embedded Design Suite (EDS) for Nios II embedded system development, and showcases several embedded software partners who provide the following products that support Nios II, Freescale, ARM®, and MIPS® processors.
- Operating systems
- Middleware
- Compilers
- Integrated design environments (IDEs)
- Debuggers
- Co-verification tools
Virtual Prototyping Platform
Altera, along with its Embedded Alliance Program, offers the SoC FPGA Virtual Target, a virtual prototyping platform to enable pre-silicon and post-silicon software development.
Hardware Development Tools
Altera offers a range of hardware development tools that enable the highest levels of productivity and the fastest path to design completion for high-density FPGA designs:
- Quartus® II design software
- Qsys system integration tool
- SignalTapTM II embedded logic analyzer
- MegaCore® IP library
Quartus II Design Software
Altera's Quartus II software leads the industry as the most comprehensive environment available for FPGA designs, providing unmatched performance delivery, efficiency, and ease of use.
Qsys System Integration Tool
Qsys eliminates manual system integration tasks and allows you to focus on custom user logic design to differentiate your system. All versions of the Altera® Quartus II design software include the Qsys system integration tool.
SignalTap II Embedded Logic Analyzer
The SignalTap II logic analyzer is a system-level debugging tool that captures and displays real-time signal behavior in processors on FPGAs, allowing you to observe interactions between hardware and software in system designs.
Quartus II software including Qsys and SignalTap II logic analyzer
MegaCore IP Library
You can choose from Altera's comprehensive MegaCore intellectual property (IP) library of peripheral functions such as IDEs, UARTs, interrupt controllers, and PCITM bus bridges to build a custom function optimized for specific applications.
Altera's rapidly growing portfolio of standard bus interfaces allows you to add chip-to-chip, board-to-board, or box-to-box connectivity to system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs. The microsystems portfolio also includes megafunctions to seamlessly add external memory, Ethernet interfaces, PCI, PCI Express®, USB, and next-generation processor interfaces.
Development Kits
Altera and its partners offer a portfolio of feature-rich and easy-to-use development kits. These kits provide everything you need to create total programmable solutions. Visit the embedded development kit page.
