The Altera NIOS II (Gen 2) processor comes with MAX 10 device for free, sort of.
In fact, the NIOS II comes with two flavors: economical and fast. Unfortunately, it seems the latter needs a license while the former is truly free as free beer.
And the MAX 10 has very limited BRAMs. I found it not too hard to make bloated code that devour all the available BRAMs. In particular, please skimp on the usage of printf, and use small size C library if possible.
==============
PS: Warmest Condolences to those who lost their loved ones 15 years ago.
