Intel® Quartus® Prime Standard Edition User Guide: Design Optimization

ID 683230
Date 11/12/2018
Public
Document Table of Contents

7.1. Engineering Change Orders

In the context of an FPGA design, you can apply an ECO directly to a physical resource on the device to modify its behavior. ECOs are typically made during the verification stage of a design cycle. When a small change is required on a design (such as modifying a PLL for a different clock frequency or routing a signal out to a pin for analysis) recompilation of the entire design can be time consuming, especially for larger designs.

Because several iterations of small design changes can occur during the verification cycle, recompilation times can quickly add up. Furthermore, a full recompilation due to a small design change can result in the loss of previous design optimizations. Making ECOs, instead of performing a full recompilation on your design, limits the change only to the affected portions of logic.