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I do not know what is test bench style and synthesis style. I am at a very early stage currently. We are learning how to use gates and stuff. So I guess anything will go for now, but of course I would like to develop my understanding based on a long term useful platform. I will go for modelsim. I tried to download modelsim, but it seems it is a part of the design suit which I installed already but i cannot find anything named Modelsim in start menu>altera.
I tried to click on Tools>Run RTL simulation and also Tools> Gate level simulation BUT both options say EDA simulations tool not specified. Any pointers from here???
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Below are my views, not necessarily correct:
For a beginner Quartus simulator is a luxury and you don't need a separate project to simulate it. Moreover you don't need to know about non-synthesisable coding.
Basically synthesisable coding is a subset of VHDL that is translated to hardware. Nonsynthesisable coding is that running on your pc doing that administrative tasks e.g. reading/writing files, or huge arrays with no worry about fitting...etc. You may even code a food recipe... all to inject stimuli into the synthesisable darling part which will target a device and sit there flashing leds and more.
To run modelsim, you can either run it from within Quartus or you can run it completely independant.
Here you got another two options then. I normally run Modelsim on its own. Because I need proper testbench wrapper which quartus will not support(so it gets same limitations as quartus simulator right from start - I believe)
If you choose to run modelsim from quartus then first go to assignments => eda tool settings => simulation then choose modelsim
Then you compile and then go to run eda simulation.
Commercially, Modelsim is a specialised simulation tool with many features. Owned by Mentor
Quartus and ISE ...etc are purely synthesis tools targetting specific devices with that extra baby simulator tool and owned by fpga vendors.
I hope I haven't confused you.
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