QUARTUS PRIME INTRODUCTION USING VERILOG DESIGNS For Quartus Prime 18.0
• Fitting – the CAD Fitter tool determines the placement of the LEs defined in the netlist into the LEs in an
actual FPGA chip; it also chooses routing wires in the chip to make the required connections between specific
LEs
• Timing Analysis – propagation delays along the various paths in the fitted circuit are analyzed to provide an
indication of the expected performance of the circuit
• Timing Simulation – the fitted circuit is tested to verify both its functional correctness and timing
• Programming and Configuration – the designed circuit is implemented in a physical FPGA chip by pro-
gramming the configuration switches that configure the LEs and establish the required wiring connections
This tutorial introduces the basic features of the Quartus Prime software. It shows how the software can be used to
design and implement a circuit specified by using the Verilog hardware description language. It makes use of the
graphical user interface to invoke the Quartus Prime commands. Doing this tutorial, the reader will learn about:
• Creating a project
• Design entry using Verilog code
• Synthesizing a circuit specified in Verilog code
• Fitting a synthesized circuit into an Intel FPGA
• Assigning the circuit inputs and outputs to specific pins on the FPGA
• Simulating the designed circuit
• Programming and configuring the FPGA chip on Intel’s DE-series board
3 Getting Started
Each logic circuit, or subcircuit, being designed with Quartus Prime software is called a project. The software works
on one project at a time and keeps all information for that project in a single directory (folder) in the file system. To
begin a new logic circuit design, the first step is to create a directory to hold its files. To hold the design files for this
tutorial, we will use a directory introtutorial. The running example for this tutorial is a simple circuit for two-way
light control.
Start the Quartus Prime software. You should see a display similar to the one in Figure 2. This display consists
of several windows that provide access to all the features of Quartus Prime software, which the user selects with
the computer mouse. Most of the commands provided by Quartus Prime software can be accessed by using a set
of menus that are located below the title bar. For example, in Figure 2 clicking the left mouse button on the menu
named File opens the menu shown in Figure 3. Clicking the left mouse button on the entry Exit exits from Quartus
Prime software. In general, whenever the mouse is used to select something, the left button is used. Hence we will
not normally specify which button to press. In the few cases when it is necessary to use the right mouse button, it
will be specified explicitly.
4 Intel Corporation - FPGA University Program
March 2018