Quartus® Prime Standard Edition User Guide: Design Compilation

ID 683283
Date 10/22/2021
Public
Document Table of Contents

1.4.3. Adding Design Logic Incrementally or Working With an Incomplete Design

Scenario background: You have one or more partitions that are known to be timing-critical in your full design. You want to focus on developing and optimizing this subset of the design first, before adding the rest of the design logic.

Use this flow to compile a timing-critical partition or partitions in isolation, optionally with extra optimizations turned on. After timing closure is achieved for the critical logic, you can preserve its content and placement and compile the remaining partitions with normal or reduced optimization levels. For example, you may want to compile an IP block that comes with instructions to perform optimization before you incorporate the rest of your custom logic.

To implement this design flow, perform the following steps:

  1. Partition the design and create floorplan location assignments. For best results, ensure that the top-level design includes the entire project framework, even if some parts of the design are incomplete and are represented by an empty wrapper file.
  2. For the partitions to be compiled first, in the Design Partitions window, set the netlist type to Source File.
  3. For the remaining partitions, set the netlist type to Empty.
  4. To compile with the desired optimizations turned on, click Start Compilation.
  5. Check the Timing Analyzer reports to ensure that timing requirements are met. If so, proceed to step 6. Otherwise, repeat steps 4 and 5 until the requirements are met.
  6. In the Design Partitions window, set the netlist type to Post-Fit for the first partitions. You can set the Fitter Preservation Level on the Advanced tab in the Design Partitions Properties dialog box to Placement to allow more flexibility during routing if exact placement and routing preservation is not required.
  7. Change the netlist type from Empty to Source File for the remaining partitions, and ensure that the completed source files are added to the project.
  8. Set the appropriate level of optimizations and compile the design. Changing the optimizations at this point does not affect any fitted partitions, because each partition has its netlist type set to Post-Fit.
  9. Check the Timing Analyzer reports to ensure that timing requirements are met. If not, make design or option changes and repeat step 8 and step 9 until the requirements are met.

The flow in this example is similar to design flows in which a module is implemented separately and is later merged into the top-level. Generally, optimization in this flow works only if each critical path is contained within a single partition. Ensure that if there are any partitions representing a design file that is missing from the project, you create a placeholder wrapper file to define the port interface.