Intel® FPGA SDK for OpenCL™: Intel® Arria® 10 GX FPGA Development Kit Reference Platform Porting Guide

ID 683267
Date 3/28/2022
Public
Document Table of Contents

3.7.1. Enabling the Intel® Quartus® Prime Forward-Compatibility Flow

The forward-compatibility flow allows you to use base.qdb files that are forward compatible with future versions of the Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro Edition software.

Enabling the forward-compatibility flow allows you to use board vendor-generated precompiled post-fit netlists, in the form of the base.qdb file, in a future Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro Edition software version. The forward-compatibility flow eliminates the need to match the Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro Edition software version used to develop the Custom Platform and the version used to run the Custom Platform.

Warning: Intel® does not guarantee that the compilation of your board design in a future version of the Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro Edition software will be successful. It is possible that your base.qdb file implements a configuration that will become illegal in future Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro Edition software versions.

If you are migrating a previous version of the Intel® Arria® 10 GX FPGA Development Kit Reference Platform to the current version and you want to incorporate the forward-compatibility flow, perform the following tasks:

  1. Add the following command in the INTELFPGAOCLSDKROOT/board/a10_ref/hardware/a10gx/scripts/post_flow_pr.tcl script to generate a forward-compatible base.qdb file:
    quartus_cdb top -c base --export_design --snapshot final --file base.qdb

    For information about the function of the post_flow_pr.tcl script, refer to Quartus Prime Compilation Flow for Board Developers.

  2. In the INTELFPGAOCLSDKROOT/board/a10_ref/hardware/a10gx/import_compile.tcl script, add the quartus_fit and then the quartus_asm commands after importing the base.qdb file.
    Running these commands verifies that the imported base.qdb file is usable in the Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro Edition software version that Custom Platform users work with.

    For more information about the function of the import_compile.tcl script, refer to the Intel® Quartus® Prime Compilation Flow for Custom Platform Users.