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Altera_Forum
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15 years ago

Most LPM items missing from MegaWizard Plug-In Manager

Hello!

I am new to Quartus and Altera in general. I have a Cyclone III development board and am working my way through the "my_first_fpga_tutorial.pdf" file. Can't get much more n00b than that... although for context I am a C++ veteran with 20 years of software development experience and a masters degree in EE, so I feel comfortable coming up to speed in the FPGA area.

I'm having a problem creating a custom megafunction variation of the LPM_MUX. The LPM_MUX appears in the symbol library under "gates", however it does NOT appear under "gates" (or anywhere else) on the MegaWizard Plug-In Manager page. A graphic showing this is attached.

In an attempt to get this to show up I added a global user library pointing to my megafunctions folder. This didn't make any difference.

Does anyone know how to resolve this discrepancy? I can't continue with the tutorial if I can't get the right kind of mux on the schematic. I would prefer to use the tool correctly vs. hacking around the problem.

I am using Quartus 10.0 on a Windows XP SP3 platform.

Thanks for any/all help!

Lynwood Hines

7 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    15 years ago

    There are a lot of changes with Q10.0, with this missing lpm-stuff in the MegaWizard being the most anoying one, IMHO. Personally, I hope this will reappear with the next service-pack. I will open a service-request when I find some time, I hope also others will do...

    If you are in the process of learning, maybe it is the best to install Q9.1sp2 for the moment, so that you can at least follow your tutorial.

    In the past I installed new Quartus-versions without doubt, but Q10.0 is a little bit different...

    Regards,

    Thomas
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    15 years ago

    Sage advice... I will back up to 9.1 SP2 and avoid 10 until the kinks are worked out.

    Thank You!

    Lynwood Hines
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    15 years ago

    in the case that lpm doesn't come back, i think similar functions could be packaged and distributed fairly easily

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    15 years ago

    Does anyone know the rationale as to why e.g. LPM_ADD_SUB and LPM_OR are explicitly unsupported in Quartus II 10.0?

    It seems like a silly move; I don't see how to accomplish similar functionality in 10.0. Anyone?
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    15 years ago

    Personally, I have never used any of the LPM MegaWizard items. To me it seems most of the LPM functions are more work than they are worth and it is easier to just inline the equivalent HDL yourself. Even for multipliers, I have never had problems with Quartus inferring the correct hardware multiplier, although I have not done many designs with multipliers.

    For schematic entry, all the lpm functions still seem to be present.

    Although, even though I don't miss them personally I am still curious why they took them out. I can see this being annoying if you are used to using them.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    15 years ago

    I think the MegaWizard is (was) very useful for schematic design. At least on my system the lpm-functions are also missing, when the MegaWizard is started from a schematic. You can still instaniate them directly (without MegaWizard) but I think this is more cumbersome and the schematics look ugly.