Questa*- Intel® FPGA Edition Simulation User Guide

ID 730191
Date 3/31/2025
Public
Document Table of Contents

1.1. Simulator Versions and Licensing

There are two versions of the Questa* Intel FPGA simulator available: Questa*-Intel® FPGA Edition and Questa*-Intel® FPGA Starter Edition. Both editions are available from the FPGA Software Download Center page. You must purchase Questa*-Intel® FPGA Edition along with your purchase of the Quartus® Prime software. Questa*-Intel® FPGA Edition is known as the paid edition when distinguishing between the two editions. Questa*-Intel® FPGA Starter Edition is free to all users and is known as the free edition.

The Quartus® Prime Pro Edition software and the Quartus® Prime Standard Edition include both the free and paid editions of the software.

Both the free and paid editions require licenses for performing elaboration and simulation, but not for compilation. Simply installing Questa*-Intel® FPGA Edition is insufficient for running simulations. For all editions, you must first obtain licenses and install the simulators before running any simulations, as Intel FPGA Software Installation and Licensing describes.

Table 1.   Quartus® Prime and Questa*-Intel® FPGA Edition Version Support
Questa*-Intel® FPGA Edition Version Licensing Supported Quartus® Prime Version Performance Difference
Questa*-Intel® FPGA Edition version 2024.3 Licenses are required and must be purchased. Each edition supports the same user interface commands, GUI options, and behavior as the Siemens EDA Questa* Core simulator. Quartus® Prime Pro Edition version 25.1 (Windows, Linux) Reduced speed and instance count1 capacity limits in comparison with Siemens EDA Questa* Core.
Questa*-Intel® FPGA Starter Edition 2024.3 Licenses are required but are free. Each edition supports the same user interface commands, GUI options, behavior, and number of module instances as the Siemens EDA Questa* Core simulator. Quartus® Prime Pro Edition version 25.1 (Windows, Linux) Reduced speed and instance count capacity limits in comparison with Siemens EDA Questa* Core. The Starter Edition has further reduced performance levels.
Questa*-Intel® FPGA Edition version 2024.1 Licenses are required and must be purchased. Each edition supports the same user interface commands, GUI options, and behavior as the Siemens EDA Questa* Core simulator. Quartus® Prime Standard Edition version 24.1 (Windows, Linux) Reduced speed and instance count capacity limits in comparison with Siemens EDA Questa* Core.
Questa*-Intel® FPGA Starter Edition 2024.1 Licenses are required but are free. Each edition supports the same user interface commands, GUI options, behavior, and number of module instances as the Siemens EDA Questa* Core simulator Quartus® Prime Standard Edition version 24.1 (Windows, Linux) Reduced speed and instance count capacity limits in comparison with Siemens EDA Questa* Core. The Starter Edition has further reduced performance levels.
1 Instance count is the number of Verilog modules or VHDL entity instances in the simulation.