Quartus® Prime Standard Edition User Guide: Design Compilation

ID 683283
Date 10/22/2021
Public
Document Table of Contents

2.5.4.3. Assign Virtual Pins

Virtual pins map lower-level design I/Os to internal cells. If you are developing an IP block in an independent Quartus® Prime project, use virtual pins when the number of I/Os on a partition exceeds the device I/O count, and to increase the timing accuracy of cross-partition paths.

You can create a virtual pin assignment in the Assignment Editor for partition I/Os that will become internal nodes in the top-level design. When you apply the Virtual Pin assignment to an input pin, the pin no longer appears as an FPGA pin, but is fixed to GND or VCC in the design. The assigned pin is not an open node. Leave the clock pins mapped to I/O pins to ensure proper routing.

You can specify locations for the virtual pins that correspond to the placement of other partitions, and also make timing assignments to the virtual pins to define a timing budget. Virtual pins are created automatically from the top-level design if you use design partition scripts. The scripts place the virtual pins to correspond with the placement of the other partitions in the top-level design.

Note: Tri-state outputs cannot be assigned as virtual pins because internal tri-state signals are not supported in Altera devices. Connect the signal in the design with regular logic, or allow the software to implement the signal as an external device I/O pin.