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roboknave's avatar
roboknave
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2 years ago

Trying to recompile sim libraries for MAX 10 under quartus 21.1

I saw another question, essentially the same question but different hardware, relating to recompiling the sim libraries to perform simulation. Anytime you recompile these libraries, it reaches down into protected IP and appears to get "Macro `<protected> is undefined" finally followed by a syntax error. The files I get this on appear in the $(QUARTUS_ROOTDIR)/eda/sim_lib/mentor/fiftyfivenm_atoms_ncrypt.v file. I suspect, however, since there are MORE files in this directory which contain protected IP, that I will ALSO get this error for those (and have when I moved the above file as a test), on those files as well. So how do I either EXCLUDE protected IP from this compilation, or get Quartus to figure out how to use the protected IP?

I'm running Quartus 21.1 (it also happens on the latest Quartus, so this isn't the problem as far as I can tell, and I am using 21.1 because it was the last version that seemed to officially support the MAX10) on Ubuntu 20.04. I've tried the latest version of the simulation tools combined with this version of Quartus as well, but it appears that protected IP can't be ignored and can't be simulated? Maybe there is someone who can point me in a direction where I can get a resolution to this, because I can't even simulate a trivial single AND gate without resolving this. I believe the command that is failing is the following:

vlog -work fiftyfivenm_ver -vlog0lcompat path_to_fiftyfivenm_atoms_ncrypt.v

It then says Macro `<protected> is undefined (two times)

then: syntax error in protected region

then: Syntax error found in the scope following `<protected>' Is there a missing '::'?

I can't provide the project here as the system I'm using Quartus on *IS NOT* connected to the internet. So please don't ask. Besides, I suspect there is something wrong with the setup since I can't simulate even a signal AND gate design plucked down with the schematic editor (so the tool wrote all of the code here and it STILL doesn't work).

Regards.

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  • RichardT_altera's avatar
    RichardT_altera
    Icon for Super Contributor rankSuper Contributor
    2 years ago

    As the operating system in question is not officially supported, there are limitations in terms of functionality and compatibility.

    Unfortunately, I do not have further assistance or solutions to offer in this case.


    Considering the circumstances, I will now transition this thread to community support.

    If you have any new questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to reach out.

    Thank you and have a great day!


    Best Regards,

    Richard Tan


    p/s: If you find any answers from the community or Intel Support to be helpful, we encourage you to mark them as the best answer or rate them 4/5 in the survey.


  • kadenaron's avatar
    kadenaron
    Icon for New Contributor rankNew Contributor
    2 years ago

    Hi,

    We are currently facing the same problem.

    We are trying to simulate the Triple speed Ethernet IP (TSE).

    The compilation fails with the "Macro '<protected> is undefined" message for all encrypted files.

    The operating system is RHEL 7.9.

    Older versions of questa are able to compile the encrypted file without error:

    • Questa v10.2d -> compilation without error
    • Questa v10.6C -> fail to compile the encrypted files
    • Questa v2023.2 -> fail to compile the encrypted files

    It seems that starting from a certain version, Questa is not able to compile the encrypted files.

    I've noticed that the keyname used to encrypt the file is "MGC-DVT-MTI", the key_method is "rsa" and the data method is "aes128-cbc".

    In the Questa documentation, it is written that for version 2023.2, the MGC-DVT-MTI and MGC-VERIF-SIM-RSA keys are deprecated. Maybe this is related to the impossibility to compile encrypted files which use the MGC-DVT-MTI key?

    We use exactly the same script for the 3 version of the simulators.

    Without changing anything but the tool version, the compilation with Questa 10.2d succeed and the compilation with version 10.6C and 2023.2 fails. We have tried all language compatibility flags on the VLOG command line but that did not help.

    We need to use newer version of the simulator than version 10.2d and we currently can't because we are not able to compile the Ethernet IP. Any help would be welcomed.

    Thanks.

    • roboknave's avatar
      roboknave
      Icon for New Contributor rankNew Contributor
      2 years ago

      I hope you find an answer. You might look in your logs and see if you can find when it is running vlog. I suspect, on any version of linux, vlog doesn't seem to know how to process protected IP. That is what I found on Ubuntu. I'm not sure that would be different on RHEL. I'm not sure why it is the case, but maybe replacing just the one vlog binary, from the older package that works, into the newer version of Questa that doesn't, might help here. Not really sure. I suspect, if it is as you state above, the newer Questa not supporting the kind of license/crypto protecting the IP, and you needed new IP wrapped in the CORRECT crypto, then it might be a long time coming from Intel. As it is, while this thread hasn't necro'd that far yet, I suspect you might also have better luck with a new thread in the same vein as this thread because based on a previous reply, I don't think Intel folks are even paying attention to this thread anymore because I mentioned the dreaded "unsupported platform". Not that Intel has to support every old thing Altera had out there, but the MAX10 is still in their "recommended for current designs" list (good at least for my case) and they did SOME work in the past to support Quartus in Linux. So I was kind of hoping for a bit more support when I asked this, but it appears to be a bridge too far.

      Anyway, good luck with this.

      PS: As I noted above, the Windows version of the software DOES seem to work fine. Running vlog in the Windows version still supports the crypto. Maybe it didn't get any update? Not sure. In any case, using Windows might actually help you.