AN 917: Reset Design Techniques for Intel® Hyperflex™ Architecture FPGAs

ID 683539
Date 1/05/2021
Public
Document Table of Contents

1.1. General Reset Recommendations

The main purpose of providing a reset to an FPGA design is to provide stability, and to prevent power-on to an unknown state. Asserting reset forces all registers into a known state.

However, improper reset implementation can cause functional errors in FPGA designs and can also cause retiming restrictions during the Fitter’s Retime stage. Such retiming restrictions limit the movement of registers to balance the propagation delays between the registers in a chain. Movement of these registers shortens the critical paths and increases operating frequency.

Reset usage can have a significant impact on the timing closure, area, and the routing congestion of your design. Systems with multiple clock domains further complicate reset issues. The lack of reset coordination in some designs can even cause intermittent failures on power-up. The following general reset recommendations apply to Intel® Hyperflex™ architecture designs.