Incremental Optimization

The incremental optimization capability in the Quartus® Prime Design Software Pro Edition software offers a fast methodology to converge to design sign-off. The traditional fitter stage is divided into finer stages for more control over the flow in the Quartus® Prime Pro Edition software:

• Plan stage allows legal placement and clock planning, along with timing analysis on preliminary I/O and HSSI to FPGA fabric transfers
• Placement stage enables timing analysis before proceeding to the Route stage. The Placement stage is split into an Early Placement stage and a final placement stage:
  • Perform timing analysis after the Early Placement stage while the rest of the flow is still running
  • Chip planner provides a visual view of the Early Placement stage
• Route is split into Route and Post-Route stages for faster design convergence.
  • 3-corner timing analysis after route and 4-corner timing analysis after post-route reduces compile time.
  • The post-route stage offers an Engineering Change Order (ECO)-like flow where setup and hold failures are automatically fixed, thus reducing compile time.
  • High-speed or low-power tile optimization is performed in the Post-Route stage.