Nios® II Processor Reference Guide

ID 683836
Date 8/28/2023
Public
Document Table of Contents

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 as well as data, such as systems running an operating system in which performance is not the highest priority.