Talk:Nios II

Overestimation

Do I smell Altera engineers here? I'm sure the Nios II is used and all, but being "among the most popular embedded processor [sic]" seems to be quite an overstatement, compared to e.g. ARM- or MIPS-based ones. I can't say I know enough about the actual situation to feel qualified to change the page, though, but someone should probably look through it.

There are also quite a number of grammatical and stylistic errors that should be corrected in due time. --Dolda2000 01:58, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

All we want are the facts, ma'am

I addressed the disputed text by deleting it. Although it would be fun for the text to be true (since I'm the original Nios II architect), it was overstating the truth. Perhaps in the context of FPGAs there's something to the spirit of the statement, but I'll let others tackle that one.

I also gave the text a once-over to clean up the grammar. A lot more work is needed. Confusion remains between the roles of the configurable Nios II processor generator and that of the SOPC Builder system-design tool. But that's for another day.

KerryVeenstra 03:07, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Why not place the deleted text in here so we can all have a look at it? As it is now we either have to take your word for it that it even was disputed or trawl through endless diffs of the history files both for talk as well as for the article itself. All I see now is a blanket statement under a rather childish headline; it does not give me a good feeling. --12:21, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Good points. I had done some searching myself. Here is the part that you mention: "The cost-effectiveness and flexibility of Nios and Nios II processors has made them among the most popular embedded processor[sic]. Together with Microblaze, it is probably the best known soft core processor."

The first sentence is a truncation of a sentence from the embedded-processors page of the Altera web site. The truncated version of the sentence is too general to be true. As an employee of the company whose words were (mis)used originally, after I read through Wikipedia:Accuracy_dispute, I jumped and corrected the inaccurate statements right away. I imagine that the Wikipedia article should contain only verifiable information, and the survey data that I've seen isn't public, so deletion seems to be the best first response.

I can't find a source for the second sentence, but also it is too general to be true. One might get away with restricting the claim to the FPGA marketplace.

What do you think?

KerryVeenstra 21:05, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Great work so far. It's nice to see the original architect step in. :) --Dolda2000 12:21, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

See Also List

Recently the See Also section was amended to include a range of processors unrelated to this article. Looking at articles for MIPS architecture, SPARC, Pentium, and PowerPC, it appears that See Also sections of mainstream microprocessor articles reference information related to the article's subject processor and aschew lists of processors in the same market.

Wikipedia already provides a mechanism for creating and maintaining lists without the duplication that is seen among this article and the current See Also articles.

I propose a change to this article's See Also section that brings it into alignment with mainstream microprocessor articles.

The other articles referenced in the See Also section would benefit from this change as well.

Comments?

KerryVeenstra 15:18, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

It appears that Wikipedia guidelines support the removal of links to commercially competing products. See item 13 of WP:EL#Links_normally_to_be_avoided. Also see WP:COI#Self-promotion regarding additions from 149.199.62.254 (Xilinx) and from Kphowell (Lattice Semiconductor). Other processor articles affected: 1, 2, 3, but notably not 4.

KerryVeenstra 17:11, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

What's with LatticeMico32 references ?

The introduction contains a new paragraph comparing and contrasting LatticeMico32 directly, before the Nios II is even contextualized. That paragraph should be moved down or removed since it sounds more like marketing than objective facts needed to understand what the Nios II is about. Here it is:

LatticeMico32 from Lattice Semiconductor is the third major FPGA softcore CPU. Unlike NIOS II or MicroBlaze, LatticeMico32 is not specific to a particular FPGA architecture, so can be used on any FPGA or ASIC, and it is also Open Source, so can be used and modified at no cost.

Furthermore, the "See Also" section contains first references to LatticeMico, before the other ones. It's as if someone wanted to use this wikipedia page to make a marketing point about LatticeMico.

--Veilleux (talk) 14:00, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Unknown abbreviation in article: LE

Nios II/e ....
* Complete systems in fewer than 700 LEs

84.63.147.207 (talk) 17:56, 19 May 2009 (UTC)