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

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

1.7.2.2. Generating Design Partition Scripts

If IP providers or designers on a team want to optimize their design blocks independently and do not have access to a shared project framework, the project lead must perform some or all of the following tasks to ensure successful integration of the design blocks:
  • Determine which assignments should be propagated from the top-level design to the partitions. This requires detailed knowledge of which assignments are required to set up low-level designs.
  • Communicate the top-level assignments to the partitions. This requires detailed knowledge of Tcl or other scripting languages to efficiently communicate project constraints.
  • Determine appropriate timing and location assignments that help overcome the limitations of team-based design. This requires examination of the logic in the partitions to determine appropriate timing constraints.
  • Perform final timing closure and resource conflict avoidance in the top-level design. Because the partitions have no information about each other, meeting constraints at the lower levels does not guarantee they are met when integrated at the top-level. It then becomes the project lead’s responsibility to resolve the issues, even though information about the partition implementation may not be available.

Design partition scripts automate the process of transferring the top-level project framework to partition designers in a flow where each design block is developed in separate Intel® Quartus® Prime projects before being integrated into the top-level design. If the project lead cannot provide each designer with a copy of the top-level project framework, the Intel® Quartus® Prime software provides an interface for managing resources and timing budgets in the top-level design. Design partition scripts make it easier for partition designers to implement the instructions from the project lead, and avoid conflicts between projects when integrating the partitions into the top‑level design. This flow also helps to reduce the need to further optimize the designs after integration.

You can use options in the Generate Design Partition Scripts dialog box to choose which types of assignments you want to pass down and create in the partitions being developed in separate Intel® Quartus® Prime projects.