Forum Discussion
RTL Simulation fails with: couldn't execute ip-setup-simulation: invalid argument
Hello,
I am using Quartus Prime Pro Edition 25.3.1 on Windows 10/11.
RTL simulation fails immediately with the following error:
Error: Failed to run ip-setup-simulation: couldn't execute "ip-setup-simulation": invalid argument
Error: Simulation flow failed
Error(23031): Evaluation of Tcl script
c:/altera_pro/25.3.1/quartus/common/tcl/internal/nativelink/qnativesim.tcl unsuccessful
Additional stack trace:
Simulation TCL script failed with errorCode: 1
(procedure "iputf_call_script_gen" line 1)
invoked from within
"iputf_call_script_gen $spd_file_list"
I already checked the following:
- Same error occurs for all projects
- Same error occurs in Quartus Pro 25.1 and 25.3.1
- Same error occurs after deleting db/, incremental_db/, simulation/ folders
- PATH conflict removed (only one vsim exists in PATH)
- `vsim -version` shows:
"Questa Altera FPGA Edition-64 vsim 2025.2 Simulator"
- `where vsim` returns only:
C:\altera_pro\25.3.1\questa_fe\win64\vsim.exe
- `Generate Simulator Setup Script for IP` also fails
- IP regenerate fails with:
"Failed to retrieve Quartus project IP search paths"
I also noticed that Quartus reports:
"Questa Altera FPGA Edition simulator is not supported for simulation library compilation."
Questions:
1. Is Questa Altera FPGA Edition (questa_fe) unsupported for Quartus Pro 25.x NativeLink RTL simulation?
2. Is this a known issue with ip-setup-simulation or qnativesim.tcl?
3. Does Quartus Pro require Questa Intel FPGA Edition/full Questa instead of questa_fe?
4. Is there a workaround besides manually running Questa simulation scripts?
Thank you.
3 Replies
- RichardT_altera
Super Contributor
Questa Altera FPGA Edition is supported from Quartus Pro 24.3.1 onward, and RTL simulation should work correctly.
Have you setup the simulation feature before running the RTL simulation?
https://docs.altera.com/r/docs/683870/25.3/quartus-prime-pro-edition-user-guide-third-party-simulation/setting-up-the-run-simulation-feature
If the issue still persists, could you help to share the design .QAR file so I could duplicate the issue?
Regards,
Richard Tan- asdfasdf1
New Contributor
I’m sorry that I cannot provide the .qsf file due to technology leakage/security concerns.
However, I managed to solve this issue.
The solution was simply to run Quartus with administrator privileges.- RichardT_altera
Super Contributor
asdfasdf1 I’m glad you were able to resolve the issue, and thank you for sharing the solution. This will help others as well.
Regards,
Richard Tan