How to improve QuartusII compile time

Hi,

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Going from 32 bits to 64 bits will be slower as the instructions are longer.

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This is only sort of true. If you run 64-bit Quartus on a 64-bit OS (say, Windows), you will see a small increase in compile time (on the order of 10%). This is mostly due to the increase in the working set (active memory) of the program due to the increase in size of pointers from 32-bits to 64-bits.

However, if you run 32-bit Quartus on 64-bit OS, you will see no slow down at all. The advantage of doing this is (a) you get access to 4 GB of memory (up from 2GB in 32-bit Windows and ~3.5GB in 32-bit Linux), and (b) 32-bit Quartus will use less memory than 64-bit Quartus.

Unless you are compiling a full design into the largest Stratix III device with complex timing constraints, you should be fine with a 64-bit OS + 32-bit Quartus.

Regards,

Paul Leventis

Altera Corp.