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Altera_Forum
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15 years ago

How to share settings among several QII projects

I have one board layout that is used for several different FPGA designs. I want to share the parts of the settings that are the same among all the designs. The concept I want is an 'include' capability for settings. For example, all the designs have the same IO assignments, voltage, location, enables--they're all on the same board. But each design uses its own source files to define its logic.

How can I share my device and pin assignments, programming options, and other common settings across all the designs? With many designs and many pins, it can be very difficult to keep everything in step if there's a pin name change.

17 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    15 years ago

    BTW, my attempts to use QIP files went nowhere (without QII comment, however).

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    15 years ago

    My approach is to:

    - define pin locations in source code, and use the same toplevel in multiple designs.

    - define common timing constrains in a .sdc file and include it in multiple projects.

    For the other settings, I do not know how to do it, so I just diff the .qsf files
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    15 years ago

    I have common toplevel.v and .sdc files. How do you force the pin assignment in Verilog?

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    15 years ago

    why not create some kind of "golden" project that you can copy for each design you want to run on the board?

    beyond that you can just copy+paste settings between project .qsf files.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    15 years ago

    And the menu point: "Organize .qsf file" is really great !!!

    It allows minimizing the diff between files.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    15 years ago

    Thanks to all. Looks like source assigns and sdc files are about the only way to go.

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    15 years ago

    @ amilcar

    yes, but i would realy like to have that quartus also sorts the qsf

    currently it only groups them but if you want to compare 2 qsf files for the same target design, contents inside a section can be mixed and they are not sorted (alphanumerical)

    @ ggarner

    don't forget to use qip files, they can be realy helpful
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    15 years ago

    I haven't been able to find what info will be used from a qip file. The first thing I tried was to put the majority of my setting into a qip and reference it. No device or pinouts!

    Docs about how & when Altera file types are really used are severely lacking. The info on qip in help just indicates it is for setting search paths (but no detail on allowed usage), altho looking at them shows some more.