Specifications

CHAPTER 12: DEBUGGING
USING THE SIGNALTAP II LOGIC ANALYZER
198 ■ INTRODUCTION TO QUARTUS II ALTERA CORPORATION
Setting Up & Running the SignalTap II
Logic Analyzer
To use the SignalTap II Logic Analyzer, you must first create a
SignalTap II File (.stp), which includes all the configuration settings and
displays the captured signals as a waveform. Once you have set up the
SignalTap II File, you can compile the project, program the device, and the
use the logic analyzer to acquire and analyze data.
Each logic analyzer instance is embedded in the logic on the device. The
SignalTap II Logic Analyzer supports up to 1,024 channels and 128K
samples on a single device.
After compilation, you can run the SignalTap II Logic Analyzer by using the
Run Analysis command (Processing menu).
The following steps describe the basic flow to set up an SignalTap II File and
acquire signal data:
1. Create a new SignalTap II File.
2. Add instances to the SignalTap II File and nodes to each instance. You
can use the SignalTap II filters in the Node Finder to find all pre-
synthesis and post-fitting SignalTap II nodes.
3. Assign a clock to each instance.
4. Set other options, such as sample depth and trigger level, and assign
signals to the data/trigger input and debug port.
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Using the quartus_stp executable
You can also run the SignalTap II Logic Analyzer separately at the command prompt
or in a Tcl or command-line script by using the quartus_stp executable. You must
run the quartus_stp executable first to set up the SignalTap II File. You can then
run the SignalTap II Logic Analyzer after compilation to capture signals.
If you want to get help on the quartus_stp executable, type one of the following
commands at the command prompt:
quartus_stp -h
r
quartus_stp -help r
quartus_stp --help=<topic name> r