Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro Edition User Guide: Getting Started

ID 683463
Date 12/04/2023
Public

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3.1.2. Planning for the Target Device or Board

Intel offers a broad portfolio of FPGA and PLD devices. The Intel® device that you select determines factors of performance, density, and board layout. To avoid costly design changes, it is best to carefully consider and determine the target device family early in the design cycle.
Intel® FPGA device families differ in cost, size, density, performance, power consumption, packaging, I/O standards, and other factors. Select the device family that best suits your most critical design requirements.

Alternatively, you can create a system that targets a specific development board, rather than only targeting a specific FPGA device. When you target a specific development board, the Intel® Quartus® Prime software is aware of the target board (board-aware) which accelerates the process of appropriately configuring, connecting, and validating IP for the target board. Refer to Using the Board-Aware Flow for details.

Device and Board Selection Guidelines

  • Refer to the Product Selector tool on the Intel® website to quickly find and compare the specifications and features of Intel® FPGA devices and development kits.
  • Once you identify the target device family, refer to the device family documentation for detailed device characteristics. View a summary of each device's resources by selecting a device in the Device dialog box (Assignments > Device)
  • Consider whether the device family meets any requirements you have for high-speed transceivers, global or regional clock networks, and the number of phase-locked loops (PLLs)
  • Consider the density requirements of your design. Devices with more logic resources and higher I/O counts can implement larger and more complex designs, but at a higher cost. Smaller devices use lower static power. Select a device larger than what your design requires if you may want to add more logic later in the design cycle, or to reserve logic and memory for on-chip debugging.
  • Consider requirements for types of dedicated logic blocks, such as memory blocks of different sizes, or digital signal processing (DSP) blocks to implement certain arithmetic functions.