Intel® Quartus® Prime Standard Edition User Guide: Power Analysis and Optimization

ID 683506
Date 9/24/2018
Public
Document Table of Contents

1.4.2.2. .vcd Files from Third-Party Simulation Tools

The Intel® Quartus® Prime Power Analyzer supports .vcd files generated by a simulation tool as the source of activity data.

A Verilog Value Change Dump File (.vcd) provides signal activity and static probability information. These files include all the routing resources and the exact logic array resource usage.

For third-party simulators, use the EDA Tool Settings to specify the Generate Value Change Dump (VCD) file script option in the Simulation page of the Settings dialog box. These scripts instruct the third-party simulators to generate a .vcd that encodes the simulated waveforms. The Intel® Quartus® Prime Power Analyzer reads this file directly to derive the toggle rate and static probability data for each signal.

Note: The Intel® Quartus® Prime software does not support a built-in simulator.

Other third-party EDA simulators can generate .vcd files that the Power Analyzer can read. For those simulators, you must manually create a simulation script to generate the .vcd file.