Intel® Quartus® Prime Standard Edition User Guide: Design Compilation

ID 683283
Date 9/24/2018
Public
Document Table of Contents

2.11.2. Create a Floorplan Assignment for One Design Block with Difficult Timing

Use this flow when you have one timing-critical design block that requires more optimization than the rest of your design. You can take advantage of incremental compilation to reduce your compilation time without creating a full design floorplan.

In this scenario, you do not want to create floorplan assignments for the entire design. Instead, you can create a region to constrain the location of your critical design block, and allow the rest of the logic to be placed anywhere on the device. To create a region for critical design block, follow these steps:

  1. Divide up your design into partitions. Ensure that you isolate the timing-critical logic in a separate partition.
  2. Define a LogicLock region for the timing-critical partition. Ensure that you capture the correct amount of device resources in the region. Turn on the Reserved property to prevent any other logic from being placed in the region.
    • If the design block is not complete, reserve space in the design floorplan based on your knowledge of the design specifications, connectivity between design blocks, and estimates of the size of the partition based on any initial implementation numbers.
    • If the critical design block has initial source code ready, compile the design to place the LogicLock region. Save the Fitter-determined size and origin, and then enlarge the region to provide more flexibility and allow for future design changes.

    As the rest of the design is completed, and the device fills up, the timing-critical region reserves an area of the floorplan. When you make changes to the design block, the logic will be re-placed in the same part of the device, which helps ensure good quality of results.