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

ID 683641
Date 8/01/2023
Public

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2.3. Optimization Trade-Offs and Limitations

Design optimization requires balancing the trade-offs between device performance, resource usage, power utilization, and compilation time. Your application of project settings and constraints determines the balance of these factors in meeting your design goals. When you want to increase optimization of one type, you can consider the trade-offs that might limit that optimization.
Table 1.  Design Optimization Trade-Off Examples
Trade-off Comments
Resource usage and critical path timing. Certain techniques (such as logic duplication) can improve timing performance at the cost of increased area.
Power requirements can result in area and timing trade-offs. For example, reducing the number of available high-speed tiles, or attempting to shorten high-power nets at the expense of critical path nets.
System cost and time-to-market considerations can affect the choice of device. For example, a device with a higher speed grade or more clock networks can facilitate timing closure at the expense of higher power consumption and system cost.

Finally, constraints that are too stringent can produce a situation with no possible solution for the selected device. If the Fitter cannot resolve a design due to resource limitations, timing constraints, or power constraints, consider rewriting parts of the HDL code.