Forum Discussion

Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
9 years ago

Subscription edition of Quartus 13.1 ?

Hi all,

So I have a 32 old boards, each with 8 stratix-3 '150-1 chips on them from a past project where I didn't do the design, it seems like there's still some stuff I could do with that sort of FPGA resource, so I'm interested in finding out my options. Looking around it seems the last version of Quartus that supported these was the subscription edition of 13.1, but if I go to the downloads page, it says the subscription edition isn't available. So, questions:

1) What's the cheapest way (hey, this is just a hobby! All purchases must carry a full edition of Wife-Approval[SUP]TM[/SUP]) to get a functional Quartus 13.1 ? Is it even still available to buy ? What if I buy (this is only speculative, and hasn't been floated with the Marriage Unit :)) a Stratix-3 development kit that comes with "a one year licence") - will that work ? It's more than I wanted to spend (at $2500) but if it's the only option...

2) If I have to buy a board to get the software, I'm limited to Altera boards only, right ? Terasic have the "Altera DE3 Development System", which is a bit more palatable at $1535, but I don't think it comes with a Quartus license, and since this is the entire point of buying the board...

3) It looks as though RHEL6 is the latest version of Linux that this will run under. I can do this in a VM, but I already have an RHEL7 box with fast CPUs and gobs of RAM so if anyone knows if it'll run under RHEL 7.2, I'd love to find out.

Cheers

Simon.

6 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    9 years ago

    Altera Licences are renewable on an annual basis. The version you get with a dev board should be a 1 year licence for the full version (which should cover all versions). The terasic board should come with a 1 year licence also, otherwise how would you program the boards?

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    9 years ago

    --- Quote Start ---

    Altera Licences are renewable on an annual basis. The version you get with a dev board should be a 1 year licence for the full version (which should cover all versions). The terasic board should come with a 1 year licence also, otherwise how would you program the boards?

    --- Quote End ---

    Well, people do sell boards without licenses, but I'm happy to hear that it might be ok. I guess I'll get in touch with Terasic and find out :)

    Thanks!

    Simon
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    9 years ago

    If its a brand new board, it should come with a licence.

    Best thing to do - speak to the FAE dealing with the boards.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    9 years ago

    --- Quote Start ---

    If its a brand new board, it should come with a licence.

    Best thing to do - speak to the FAE dealing with the boards.

    --- Quote End ---

    --- Quote Start ---

    Altera Licences are renewable on an annual basis. The version you get with a dev board should be a 1 year licence for the full version (which should cover all versions). The terasic board should come with a 1 year licence also, otherwise how would you program the boards?

    --- Quote End ---

    Sadly, the reply from Terasic wasn't what I was hoping for ...

    no, de3 doesn’t come with a 1-year quartus license.

    actually, we only provide sw-opencl-sdk/dke, license along with de5 board, customers with other boards need to purchase the license from altera or its software/ license distributors directly.

    So, unless someone has a better idea, it seems the only option is an altera kit (https://www.altera.com/products/boards_and_kits/dev-kits/altera/kit-siii-host.html)...

    Simon
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    9 years ago

    Simon -

    Surely Altera can hook you up with a 30-day eval license just to get you rolling. That may give you enough time to determine if your idea is worth pursuing before you sink too much money into it. Contact your local Altera distributor. In my experience Altera has been pretty generous with eval licenses. It's worth asking anyway.

    Bob
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    9 years ago

    Thanks Bob, that's a good idea - I'll wait until I've got something I'm sort-of-ready-to try out then, given that trials are 30-days.

    Cheers

    Simon