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

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

4.2.4.7. Guideline: Flatten the Hierarchy During Synthesis

Synthesis tools typically provide the option of preserving hierarchical boundaries, which can be useful for verification or other purposes. However, the Intel® Quartus® Prime software optimizes across hierarchical boundaries so as to perform the most logic minimization, which can reduce area in a design with no design partitions.

If you are using Intel® Quartus® Prime incremental compilation, you cannot flatten your design across design partitions. Incremental compilation always preserves the hierarchical boundaries between design partitions, and the synthesis does not flatten it across partitions. Follow Intel’s recommendations for design partitioning, such as registering partition boundaries to reduce the effect of cross-boundary optimizations.