External Memory Interface Handbook Volume 2: Design Guidelines: For UniPHY-based Device Families

ID 683385
Date 3/06/2023
Public
Document Table of Contents

8.4. Simulation Walkthrough with Stratix® 10 EMIF IP

Simulation of the whole memory interface is a good way to determine the latency of your system. However, the latency found in simulation may be different than the latency found on the board because functional simulation does not take into account board trace delays and different process, voltage, and temperature scenarios.

For a given design on a given board, the latency found may differ by one clock cycle (for full-rate designs) or two clock cycles (for half-rate designs) upon resetting the board. Different boards can also show different latencies even with the same design.

The Stratix® 10 EMIF IP supports only functional simulation. Functional simulation is supported at the RTL level and after generating a post-fit functional simulation netlist. The post-fit netlist for designs that contain Stratix 10 EMIF IP is a hybrid of the gate level (for FPGA core) and RTL level (for the external memory interface IP). You should validate the functional operation of your design using RTL simulation, and the timing of your design using TimeQuest Timing Analysis.

For Stratix® 10 EMIF IP, you can perform functional simulation of an example design that is generated with your IP core. The example design files are created in the \<variation_name>_example_design directory.

You can use the IP functional simulation model with any supported VHDL or Verilog HDL simulator.

After you have generated the memory IP, view the README. txt file located in the \<variation_name>_example_design directory for instructions on how to generate the simulation example design for Verilog HDL or VHDL. Simulation filesets for both Verilog HDL and VHDL are located in \<variation_name>_example_design\sim. The README.txt file also explains how to run simulation using the ModelSim* - Intel FPGA Edition. Simulation scripts for the Mentor Graphics, Cadence, Aldec, and Synopsys simulators ae provided; however, detailed instructions on how to perform simulation using these third-party simulators are not provided.