Questa*- Altera® FPGA Edition Simulation User Guide

ID 730191
Date 9/29/2025
Public
Document Table of Contents

1. Introduction to the Questa*-Altera® FPGA Edition Simulator

Simulation is an essential step in the Quartus® Prime software design process that allows you to verify your design's behavior before configuring the FPGA device.

This document describes how to use the Altera® provided Questa*-Altera® FPGA Edition simulators to simulate a design that targets an Altera® FPGA device. Altera® provides two different versions of the Questa*-Altera® FPGA Edition simulator:

  • Questa*-Altera® FPGA Edition
  • Questa*-Altera® FPGA Starter Edition

The two simulators are different in terms of performance, but are identical in features and usage, as described later. Going forward, this document uses the name Questa*-Altera® FPGA Edition to refer to both simulators, unless otherwise noted.

This document organizes information into the following chapters:

  1. This introductory chapter describes simulator version support and enablement, as Simulator Versions and Licensing describes.
  2. FPGA Simulation Basics—explains fundamental aspects of Altera® FPGA design simulation for any supported simulator.
  3. Simulating with Questa-Altera FPGA Edition—steps through RTL and gate-level simulation using the Questa*-Altera® FPGA Edition simulator.