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dj-park's avatar
dj-park
Icon for Occasional Contributor rankOccasional Contributor
3 years ago
Solved

Generate only partial bitstream not the full bitstream

In Partial Reconfiguration flow, I've noticed that when I compile a Persona Implementation, it generates both the full bitstream(.sof) and partial bitstreams for all PR partitions(.pmsf and .rbf...
  • sstrell's avatar
    sstrell
    3 years ago

    The .sof files for each implementation revision allow you to test your design with that persona in place without having to perform a PR first. If you don't use them, just ignore or trash them.

    Once you have a .pmsf file for a partition, use Convert Programming Files to create a .rbf for it. Your workaround is saying that partition_2 is a SUPR (static update PR) region. Normally a .rbf file is created for a SUPR region even though you can't use that .rbf to PR a SUPR region during runtime (why it's call static). I guess I'm not sure what your goal is with (2).

sstrell's avatar
sstrell
Icon for Super Contributor rankSuper Contributor
3 years ago

Does it take that long to generate the .sof? Compilation is long enough as it is. Generating programming files for me at least is the shortest part of the whole process.

If you really want to save that time, disable auto running of the Assembler during compilation and then run it manually when you do need the files.

dj-park's avatar
dj-park
Icon for Occasional Contributor rankOccasional Contributor
3 years ago

No it doesn't take too long, but just a research/fun purpose.

I just want to know what granularity of commands Quartus provides.

Because you are here, just one more related question...

As I am using Agilex, it seems to generate .sof and .rbf with the compilation.

(I assume that there exists an option to NOT generate bitstream with compilation to make it separate runs.)

But for different devices like Arria 10 and Cyclone 10, it seems like

users can generate PR bitstreams with Converting Programming Files.

So, is .pmsf file the output of the Fitter?

Then, should a user generate .rbf file from .pmsf file with Converting Programming Files Dialog Box?

And it seems like .sof file is generated along the way of generating .rbf file and there's no way to prevent it for now?