Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro Edition User Guide: Design Recommendations

ID 683082
Date 8/03/2023
Public

A newer version of this document is available. Customers should click here to go to the newest version.

Document Table of Contents

1.4.1. Inferring RAM functions from HDL Code

To infer RAM functions, synthesis tools recognize certain types of HDL code and map the detected code to technology-specific implementations. For device families that have dedicated RAM blocks, the Intel® Quartus® Prime software uses an Intel FPGA IP core to target the device memory architecture.

Synthesis tools typically consider all signals and variables that have a multi-dimensional array type and then create a RAM block, if applicable. This is based on the way the signals or variables are assigned or referenced in the HDL source description.

Standard synthesis tools recognize single-port and simple dual-port (one read port and one write port) RAM blocks. Some synthesis tools (such as the Intel® Quartus® Prime software) also recognize true dual-port (two read ports and two write ports) RAM blocks that map to the memory blocks in certain Intel FPGA devices.

Some tools (such as the Intel® Quartus® Prime software) also infer memory blocks for array variables and signals that are referenced (read/written) by two indexes, to recognize mixed-width and byte-enabled RAMs for certain coding styles.

Note: If your design contains a RAM block that your synthesis tool does not recognize and infer, the design might require a large amount of system memory that can potentially cause compilation problems.