Specifications

CHAPTER 6: BLOCK-BASED DESIGN
QUARTUS II BLOCK-BASED DESIGN FLOW
ALTERA CORPORATION INTRODUCTION TO QUARTUS II ■ 115
■ Incremental compilation flow: In the incremental compilation flow,
you create and optimize a system, and then add future modules with
little or no effect on the performance of the original system.
■ Team-based design flow: In the team-based design flow, you partition
a design into separate modules, and instantiate and connect the
modules in a top-level design. Other team members then separately
develop the lower-level modules, creating separate projects for each
module, and using the assignments developed for the top-level design.
Once the lower-level modules are complete, they are imported into the
top-level design, which then undergoes final compilation and
verification.
In all three design flows, you can preserve performance at all levels of
development by partitioning designs into functional blocks, organized
according to the physical structure of the circuit or by critical paths. Figure 1
illustrates the basic block-based design flow.
Figure 1. Block-Based Design Flow
Quartus II
Compiler Database
quartus_cdb
Module A
Module B
Module C
Module A
Verilog Quartus Mapping
File (.vqm) & Quartus II
Settings File (.qsf)
Module C
Module B
Module A
Top-level Design
Design, verify, & lock
individual modules
Integrate individual modules
into top-level design
Module B
VQM File & QSF
Module C
VQM File & QSF