AN 806: Hierarchical Partial Reconfiguration Tutorial: for Intel® Arria® 10 GX FPGA Development Board

ID 683278
Date 2/04/2021
Public

Step 3: Creating Design Partitions

You must create design partitions for each PR region that you want to partially reconfigure. You can create any number of independent partitions or PR regions in your design. This tutorial creates two design partitions for the u_blinking_led_child and u_blinking_led instances.

To create design partitions for hierarchical partial reconfiguration:

  1. Right-click the u_blinking_led_child instance in the Project Navigator and click Design Partition > Reconfigurable. A design partition icon appears next to each instance that is set as a partition.
    Figure 3. Creating Design Partitions from Project Navigator
  2. Repeat step 1 to assign a reconfigurable design partition to the u_blinking_led instance.
    Note: When you create a partition, the Intel® Quartus® Prime software automatically generates a partition name, based on the instance name and hierarchy path. This default partition name varies with each instance.
  3. To view and edit all design partitions in the project, click Assignments > Design Partitions Window. The design partition appears on the Assignments View tab of the Design Partitions Window.
    Figure 4. Design Partitions Window
  4. Edit the blinking_led_child partition name in the Design Partitions Window by double-clicking the name. Rename the blinking_led_child partition to pr_partition. Similarly, rename blinking_led partition to pr_parent_partition.
    Figure 5. Renaming Partitions
  5. To display the Post Final Export File column, click the (…) button next to the far right column in Design Partitions Window.
  6. To export the finalized static region from the base revision compile, double-click the Post Final Export File cell for the root_partition, and then type blinking_led_static.qdb. You use this file for the PR implementation revision compilation later.
  7. To export the finalized parent PR partition from the base revision compile, double-click the Post Final Export File cell for the pr_parent_partition, and then type pr_parent_partition_default_final.qdb. You use this file for PR implementation revision compilation later.
    Figure 6. Exporting Partitions
  8. Verify that the blinking_led.qsf contains the following assignments, corresponding to your reconfigurable design partitions:
    set_instance_assignment -name PARTITION pr_partition -to \
         u_blinking_led|u_blinking_led_child -entity top
    set_instance_assignment -name PARTIAL_RECONFIGURATION_PARTITION ON -to \
         u_blinking_led|u_blinking_led_child -entity top
    
    set_instance_assignment -name PARTITION pr_parent_partition -to \
         u_blinking_led -entity top
    set_instance_assignment -name PARTIAL_RECONFIGURATION_PARTITION ON -to \
         u_blinking_led -entity top
    set_instance_assignment -name EXPORT_PARTITION_SNAPSHOT_FINAL blinking_led_static.qdb\
         -to | -entity top
    set_instance_assignment -name EXPORT_PARTITION_SNAPSHOT_FINAL \
         pr_parent_partition_default_final.qdb -to \
         u_blinking_led -entity top