Cyclone lll LVDS IO

Yes, Quartus assumes that was done and any timing analysis will assume it's there. What happens if they're not there? That's one of those things that just isn't characterized. I assume it won't blow up or anything like that, and probably will just need to run a lot slower or something like that, but again, don't really know.

Also note that a) Emulated LVDS runs slower than dedicated LVDS, as listed in the handbook, b) I find the numbers spec'd to be too high to begin with, i.e. in most situations for dedicated LVDS you can't really close timing at that high of a rate(and you still need to close timing in TimeQuest to be sure). If the receiver had fantastic specs then it's probably possible, but in most cases it will run slower. (I'm not a fan that Fmax is spec'd for I/O, since the frequency is dependent on the specs of both the transmitter and receiver...)