Altera's Quartus II software v10.0 delivers unprecedented performance and productivity for high-end FPGAs

BANGALORE, INDIA: Altera Corp. has released its Quartus II development software version 10.0, the programmable logic industry's number-one software in performance and productivity for CPLD, FPGA and HardCopy ASIC designs.

Quartus II software v10.0 continues to provide an industry-leading productivity advantage by delivering 2X to 3X faster compile times than the nearest competitor for high-density designs. The latest software release includes support for Altera's 28-nm Stratix V FPGA family and offers several new productivity features that enable design teams to achieve faster timing closure and shorten time to market.

Quartus II software v10.0 supports Altera's recently announced Stratix V GX and Stratix V GS FPGAs. Stratix V GX FPGAs target high-performance, high-bandwidth applications with integrated 12.5-Gbps transceivers supporting backplane and optical modules.

Stratix V GS FPGAs target high-performance digital signal processing (DSP) applications with the industry's first variable-precision DSP block. Quartus II software v10.0 includes enhancements to the software's advanced place and route algorithms, TimeQuest timing analyzer and PowerPlay power technology.

These enhancements enable Stratix V FPGA customers to achieve industry-leading compile times, greater than 90 percent logic utilization, rapid timing closure and the lowest total power consumption.

The Quartus II software v10.0 offers customers a new transceiver toolkit that helps PCB designers efficiently verify transceiver signal integrity before or in parallel with application design development. The software's transceiver toolkit enables users to maximize signal timing margins and eye openings by instantly fine-tuning transceiver parameters and viewing bit error ratio (BER).

The Quartus II software is equipped with an easy-to-use GUI that gives high-speed designers access to all the transceiver settings including pre-emphasis, equalization, VOD, EyeQ eye viewer and sampling position.

New self service licensing center
Altera's new self service licensing center simplifies the software licensing process by enabling Quartus II Subscription Edition software users to setup and manage software and intellectual property (IP) licenses online.

Users can view, generate, modify and manage licenses 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The software's new licensing mechanism provides customers with flexible fixed-license installations, portable floating-license usage, a simplified ordering experience and easy-to-read license files.

Additional features within Quartus II Software v10.0 include:

Enhanced Rapid Recompile: Now works with Quartus Integrated Synthesis for small design changes to deliver a compile time reduction averaging 50 percent compared to a full compile, and better timing preservation with consistent results.

New IP and expanded IP base suite: New 10Gb Ethernet MAC, 10G Base-R and XAUI PHY MegaCores functions are available in the latest release. DDR2 and DDR3 SDRAM Controller MegaCores functions supporting ALTMEMPHY and UniPHY are included in the Quartus II Subscription Edition software as part of the Altera IP Base Suite.

Expanded QXP file support: Enables design teams to facilitate design reuse by creating a custom component library with new post-fit netlists support in addition to existing post-synthesis netlists support.

Expanded OS support: First production release of Quartus II Web Edition software for Linux. Quartus II software now supports Windows 7 and added SUSE Enterprise 11 support in addition to version 10 support.

"Our Stratix V family of devices dramatically raises the level of integration featured in next-generation FPGAs, making it imperative we continue to deliver the highest productivity software solutions," said Chris Balough, senior director of software, embedded, and DSP marketing at Altera.

"The features added to our latest Quartus II software enable us to continue a 2X to 3X compile time advantage over the competition so our customers can get their designs to market as quickly as possible."

Both the Subscription Edition and the free Web Edition of Quartus II software v10.0 are now available for download. Altera's software subscription program simplifies obtaining Altera design software by consolidating software products and maintenance charges into one annual subscription payment.

Subscribers receive Quartus II software, the ModelSim-Altera Starter edition and a full license to the IP Base Suite, which includes 16 of Altera's most popular IP (DSP and memory) cores. The annual software subscription is $2,995 for a node-locked PC license and is available for purchase at Altera's eStore.