Intel® Cyclone® 10 GX Device Design Guidelines

ID 683703
Date 11/06/2017
Public
Document Table of Contents

Register Power-Up Levels and Control Signals

Table 53.  Register Power-Up Levels and Control Signals Checklist
Number Done? Checklist Item
1   Enable the chip-wide reset to clear all registers if required.
2   Consider resources available for register power-up and control signals. Do not apply both reset and preset signals to a register.

Cyclone 10 GX devices support an optional chip-wide reset that enables you to override all clears on all device registers, including the registers of the memory blocks (but not the memory contents itself). When this DEV_CLRn pin is driven low, all registers are cleared or reset to 0. If synthesis performs an optimization called NOT-gate-push back due to register control signals, the affected registers behave as though they are preset to a high value when DEV_CLRn is driven low. When the DEV_CLRn pin is driven high, all registers behave as programmed. To use this chip-wide reset, turn on Enable device-wide reset (DEV_CLRn) in the Intel® Quartus® Prime software on the General category of the Device and Pin Options dialog box before compiling your design.

Each Cyclone 10 GX logic array block (LAB) also contains dedicated logic for driving register control signals to its ALMs. Register control signals restrict how registers are packed into LABs because signals are shared within the LAB. It is important that control signals use the dedicated control signals in the device architecture, so in some cases you might be required to limit the number of different control signals used in your design.

If the clock signal is not available when reset is asserted, an asynchronous reset is typically used to reset the logic. The recommended reset architecture allows the reset signal to be asserted asynchronously and de-asserted synchronously. The source of the reset signal is then connected to the asynchronous port of the registers, which can be directly connected to global routing resources. The synchronous de-assertion allows all state machines and registers to start at the same time. It also avoids the possibility that an asynchronous reset signal is released at or near the active clock edge of a flipflop, in which case the output of the flipflop could go to a metastable unknown state.

By default, the Intel® Quartus® Prime integrated synthesis enables the logic option called Power-Up Don’t Care, which assumes your design does not depend on the power-up state of the device architecture and allows the software to remove registers that become stuck high. Other synthesis tools might use similar assumptions.

Designers typically use an explicit reset signal for the design that forces all registers into their appropriate values after reset but not necessarily at power-up. You can create your design such that the asynchronous reset allows the board to operate in a safe condition. You can then bring up the design with the reset active. Thus, you do not have to depend on the power-up conditions of the device.

If you force a particular power-up condition for your design, use the synthesis options available in your synthesis tool.

Some synthesis tools can also read the default or initial values for registered signals in your source code and implement this behavior in the device. For example, the Intel® Quartus® Prime integrated synthesis converts HDL default and initial values for registered signals into Power-Up Level settings. That way, the synthesized behavior matches the power-up state of the HDL code during a functional simulation.

Registers in the device core always power up to a low (0) logic level in the physical device architecture. If you specify a high power-up level or a non-zero reset value (often called a preset signal), synthesis tools typically use the clear signals available on the registers and perform an optimization referred to as NOT-gate push back.

If you assign a high power-up level to a register that is reset low, or assign a low power-up value to a register that is preset high, synthesis tools cannot use the NOT-gate push back optimization technique and might ignore the power-up conditions.

To implement a reset and preset signal on the same register, synthesis tools emulate the controls with logic and latches that can be prone to glitches because of the different delays between the different paths to the register. In addition, the power-up value is undefined for these registers.