Specifications

CHAPTER 5: PLACE & ROUTE
OPTIMIZING THE FIT
ALTERA CORPORATION INTRODUCTION TO QUARTUS II ■ 105
If you want to view recommendations for improving timing results, you can
use the Timing Optimization Advisor. See “Using the Timing Optimization
Advisor” on page 166 in Chapter 9, “Timing Closure.”
Using the Design Space Explorer
Another way to control Quartus II fitting is to use the Design Space
Explorer (DSE) Tcl script, dse.tcl, which can help you optimize your design.
The DSE interface allows you to explore a range of Quartus II options and
settings automatically to determine which settings should be used to obtain
the best possible result for the project. You can start DSE from the command
prompt with the quartus_sh executable, or you can start it from the
Windows Start menu with the Quartus II <version number> Design Space
Explorer command (for example, the Quartus II 5.0 Design Space Explorer
command), or you can start it from within the Quartus II software interface
with the Launch Design Space Explorer command (Tools menu).
You can specify the effort level that DSE puts into determining the optimal
settings the current project. The DSE interface also allows you to specify
optimization goals and allowable compilation time. Figure 8 shows the
Settings tab for the Design Space Explorer.