Questa* Intel® FPGA Edition Simulation User Guide

ID 730191
Date 4/01/2024
Public
Document Table of Contents

1.1.1. Comparing Simulator Versions

The Quartus® Prime software includes Questa* Intel® FPGA Edition and Questa* Intel® FPGA Starter Edition. These editions have the same functionality and user interface (GUI and command-line) as the Siemens EDA Questa* Core simulator. The only difference between these Intel FPGA editions and the Siemens EDA Questa Core simulator is in performance and capacity, as the following table shows:

Table 3.  Simulator Performance Comparison
Metric Questa* Intel® FPGA Edition

(Paid Edition)

3
Questa* Intel® FPGA Starter Edition

(Free Edition)

Questa Core Questa Prime
Cost Free with Quartus® Prime software purchase Free Sold by Siemens EDA as their middle tier simulator. Questa Prime is the Siemens EDA high end simulator.
Features Same as Questa Core Same as Questa Core Full featured
Performance 2-6X slower than Questa Core4 40% slower than Questa* Intel® FPGA Edition (Paid Edition)5 Full performance
Capacity Maximum of 5000 non- Quartus® Prime simulation library instances Maximum of 5000 non- Quartus® Prime simulation library instances No limit
Advanced Verification features such as randomization Not Supported Not Supported Not supported, but can be purchased as an add-on. Questa Prime includes these features.
System C support Supported Supported Not supported, but can be purchased as an add-on. Questa Prime includes this feature.
3 The user guide for Questa* Intel® FPGA Edition is essentially the same as the Questa Core user guide.
4 Actual performance is design and test case dependent.
5 Actual performance is design and test case dependent.