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

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

1.3.1. Preserving Results and Enabling Teamwork

For some Intel® Quartus® Prime Fitter algorithms, small changes to the design can have a large impact on the final result. For example, a critical path delay can change by 10% or more because of seemingly insignificant changes. If you are close to meeting your timing objectives, you can use the Fitter algorithm to your advantage by changing the fitter seed, which changes the pseudo-random result of the Fitter.

Conversely, if you cannot meet timing on a portion of your design, you can partition that portion and prevent it from recompiling if an unrelated part of the design is changed. This feature, known as incremental compilation, can reduce the Fitter runtimes by up to 70% if the design is partitioned, such that only small portions require recompilation at any one time.

When you use incremental compilation, you can apply design optimization options to individual design partitions and preserve performance in other partitions by leaving them untouched. Many optimization techniques often result in longer compilation times, but by applying them only on specific partitions, you can reduce this impact and complete iterations more quickly.

In addition, by physically floorplanning your partitions with Logic Lock (Standard) regions, you can enable team-based flows and allow multiple people to work on different portions of the design.