With as low as 600 logic elements, the Nios II economy processor core is ideal for microcontroller applications. The Nios II economy processor core, software tools, and device drivers are offered free of charge.
Absolutely deterministic, jitter free real-time performance with unique hardware real-time features : Vector Interrupt Controller, Tightly Coupled Memory, Custom instructions (ability to use FPGA hardware to accelerate a function), Supported by industry-leading Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS), Nios II processor is the ideal real-time processor to use with DSP Builder-based hardware accelerators to provide deterministic, high performance real-time results.
With a simple configuration option, the Nios II fast processor core can use a memory management unit (MMU) to run embedded Linux. Both open source and commercially supported versions of Linux for Nios II processors are available.

Processor Model Variants of Altera Nios II / Nios_II /