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

ID 683641
Date 10/02/2023
Public

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6.3. Optimize Critical Chains

Critical chains are design paths that limit further register retiming optimization. You can use the Hyper-Aware design flow to shorten design cycles and optimize critical chain performance for Intel® Stratix® 10 and Intel Agilex® 7 devices. The Hyper-Aware design flow maximizes use of Hyper-Registers by combining automated register retiming with implementation of targeted timing closure recommendations (Fast Forward compilation). This sum of techniques drive the highest performance for Intel® Hyperflex™ architecture designs.

A critical chain reports the design paths that limit further register retiming optimization. The Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro Edition software provides the Hyper-Retimer critical chain reports to help you improve design performance. You can focus on higher level optimization, because the Hyper-Retimer uses Hyper-Registers to evenly balance slacks on all the registers in a critical chain.