Product category:
Design and Development Software
News Release from: Altera Europe | Subject: Quartus II
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 12 July 2004
Upgraded FPGA design software is free
online
The latest version of Altera's Quartus II development software includes support for the new Cyclone II FPGA family.
The latest version of Altera's Quartus II development software includes support for the new Cyclone II FPGA family Maintaining Altera's performance leadership across all programmable logic device (PLD) categories, Quartus II version 4.1 software introduces a suite of innovative optimisation, verification, and ease-of-use features to shorten development cycles further
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 2 Feb 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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The latest version of the Quartus II design software is now shipping with full support for the latest Stratix II FPGAs.
Additionally, the free Web Edition of the Quartus II software now includes support for the entire Cyclone II family, providing the broad market with more than triple the density levels compared to the previous Web Edition version.
"At Escape, we've been using the Quartus II software and Cyclone FPGAs to build leading-edge signal processing products at ASIC-killer prices".
"Quartus II software is a well-integrated tool that yields impressive synthesis results, and the floor-planning and place-and-route tools consistently allow us to reach greater than 90% utilisation, while meeting challenging time constraints", said Dr Greg Caso, Vice President of Engineering at Escape Communications.
Further reading
Software rolls out ahead of latest FPGAs
Altera has begun delivering design support for its Stratix II family of FPGAs to more than 20,000 customers.
Software supports latest budget FPGA family
Leading EDA vendors have rolled out support for the new Cyclone II FPGA family - billed as the industry's lowest ever cost FPGAs.
Design software optimises power management
Altera Corp is shipping version 4.2 of its Quartus II design software, delivering the world's highest performance for FPGAs and CPLDs.
"Quartus II software is superior compared to other programmable logic tool offerings, which allows us to focus our time on meeting customer needs, rather than laboring over tool usage".
Quartus II version 4.1 software contains a wide range of performance and resource optimisation, verification, and ease-of-use features that will shorten development cycles for designers of all Altera FPGA, CPLD and structured ASIC devices.
Quartus II version 4.1 software introduces timing and resource optimisation advisors - features that can be thought of as "virtual application engineers" to guide users real-time during their design cycle on how and when to use the Quartus II software's wide selection of features to maximum effect.
Version 4.1 also includes a new pushbutton feature for Quartus II integrated synthesis users that optimises multiplexer usage to reduce area usage up to 30%.
Quartus II version 4.1 software offers the industry's only support for in-system updating of RAM/ROM and constants, drastically reducing design cycle times by enabling engineers to easily perform "what-if" experiments in-system without recompiling a design or reconfiguring the rest of the FPGA.
Version 4.1 introduces the only vendor-provided technology map viewer, which allows users to cross-probe from the timing analyser to graphically display critical timing paths and timing information in the technology map viewer and to cross-probe back to design source files or other Quartus II optimisation tools.
A SignalTap II embedded logic analyser viewer is now included in the free Quartus II programmer software that allows easy deployment of in-system verification to multiple lab locations and field service personnel.
SignalTap II embedded logic analyser users now can further pinpoint when to start data capture using a new event counter trigger condition function.
In addition to the Subscription Edition of Quartus II version 4.1 software, Altera software subscribers will, for the first time, also receive OpenCore Plus versions of Altera's complete MegaCore IP library (including the Nios II processor) and the Nios II integrated development environment (IDE), providing the most complete out-of-the-box system-level design capability in the industry.
OpenCore Plus IP allows designers to simulate and evaluate Altera IP in hardware prior to licence purchasing.
Also, beginning with version 4.1, Quartus II software will now allow forward version support for design projects, which will give designers the ability to easily access future versions of Quartus II software without having to make any changes to their project files.
"Crucial factors in the explosive success of the Cyclone FPGA family were the power and ease-of-use of the Quartus II software", said Tim Southgate, Altera's Vice President of Software and Tools Marketing.
"With version 4.1, we are continuing to leverage our technology leadership to provide software that will allow Cyclone II FPGAs to be embraced quickly by an even wider share of the market".
Both the Subscription Edition and the Web Edition of Quartus II version 4.1 design software are now available.
The Subscription Edition is now shipping to all customers with an active software subscription.
The free Quartus II Web Edition software supports all Cyclone II devices and is available by download from the Altera website, or from the free Quartus II Web Edition Software Suite CD.
The annual subscription for the Altera design software is $2000 for a node-locked PC licence.
Altera's software subscription programme simplifies the process of obtaining Altera design software by consolidating software products and maintenance charges into one annual subscription payment.
Quartus II design software supports major operating systems, including Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows NT, Sun Solaris, Red Hat Linux and HP-UX.
New or existing customers may obtain a software subscription online on the Altera website.
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