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CHami2's avatar
CHami2
Icon for New Contributor rankNew Contributor
7 years ago

Hex files not found

I have a design with a number of IP blocks including an NCO core (sin/cos generator).

First, it was a complete failure to try and run ModelSim using the Tools->Run RTL Simulation. Quartus seems totally unable to package up a functioning design and hand it to modelsim for simulation. Am I missing something or does Intel not even really try to make this work (I'm a long time Xilinx user and am accustomed to simulations just working)?

I gave up and have been reconstructing the project from scratch piece by piece, adding lines to my own do file etc for 2 days.

So now my simple question. I have the NCO simulating but I have to manually copy two ".hex" files to the simulation working directory otherwise modelsim throws errors that it can't find them.

How do I add the hex files to my project, add the hex files to a library or add their location to a search path or whatever to get modelsim to find them where they are?

2 Replies

  • JOHI's avatar
    JOHI
    Icon for Contributor rankContributor
    7 years ago

    Hello,

    I had a similar problem and was able to solve it.

    (I needed to initialize a dual port ram block with a hex file.)

    What worked was to put my IP instantiation and my .HEX file both in the main quartus project directory and then add the .vhd and the .hex (both as a reference) to my modelsim project. If the files were in different directories, quartus did ok but modelsim was unable to compile the .hex.

    If I use modelsim I usually make a new project in modelsim by hand and add the files by hand. Doing it step by step can be more reliable than the "big bang approach".

    Best Regards,

    Johi.

  • MuhammadAr_U_Intel's avatar
    MuhammadAr_U_Intel
    Icon for Contributor rankContributor
    7 years ago
    Hi, Quartus should be able to bring up the simulation, provided project settings are done correctly. Please check. - If you have added the <ip.sip> file in Quartus project. Just like .qip files is for Synthesis files, .sip has to be added for setting up simulation. - Did you provided the testbench in Quartus Nativelink simulation settings Refer to youtube video on exact steps need to be followed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmVVXQchv2c I can guide you on this if you still facing issue. Secondly for your own custom script, you can refer to auto-generated script for NCO IP to get an idea how to copy .hex files, in Modelsim do script add following lines to automatically copy over the .he files. file copy -force <source path>my_nco1/simulation/submodules/my_nco1_nco_ii_0_sin.hex ./<destination path> file copy -force <source path>my_nco1/simulation/submodules/my_nco1_nco_ii_0_cos.hex ./<destination path> Hope this helps. Thanks, Arslan