Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro Edition User Guide: Design Recommendations

ID 683082
Date 6/20/2022
Public

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1.4.1. Inferring RAM functions from HDL Code

To infer RAM functions, synthesis tools recognize certain types of HDL code and map the detected code to technology-specific implementations. For device families that have dedicated RAM blocks, the Intel® Quartus® Prime software uses an Intel FPGA IP core to target the device memory architecture.

Synthesis tools typically consider all signals and variables that have a multi-dimensional array type and then create a RAM block, if applicable. This is based on the way the signals or variables are assigned or referenced in the HDL source description.

Standard synthesis tools recognize single-port and simple dual-port (one read port and one write port) RAM blocks. Some synthesis tools (such as the Intel® Quartus® Prime software) also recognize true dual-port (two read ports and two write ports) RAM blocks that map to the memory blocks in certain Intel FPGA devices.

Some tools (such as the Intel® Quartus® Prime software) also infer memory blocks for array variables and signals that are referenced (read/written) by two indexes, to recognize mixed-width and byte-enabled RAMs for certain coding styles.

Note: If your design contains a RAM block that your synthesis tool does not recognize and infer, the design might require a large amount of system memory that can potentially cause compilation problems.