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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
Honored ContributorWhat is wrong with Quartus II?
Hello,
I currently spend more time waiting for Quartus II than conceiving and compiling a whole project. I systematically have to wait for minutes each time a compilation is over, or QSys generated, or whatever action is performed, before being able to get back hand on the application and thus going further. Most of the time it ends by forcing the application to quit and starting it fresh again (and go through a 'clean project' just in case, but not sure it is very efficient...). Quartus II has never been very user friendly, but nowadays it is absolutely unusable. What to do? I'm running Quartus 17.0 build 595 lite edition on a windows 10 computer, quad core i7, 2.50 GHz, 16 GB RAM. Any advice? Thanks -jylo27 Replies
Altera_Forumhave you got a dead server listed in the LM_LICENCE_FILE? in the past I have had this cause lock-ups in various programs.
Quartus has always locked up for a couple minutes at the end of a larger compile. You just have wait for it to finish.- Altera_Forum
Thanks Tricky for your feedback.
This is actually a fresh install on this computer with a brand new license file... It looks like Quartus is stuck somewhere with a CPU consumption of about 15% but nothing else (apparently no disk access). -jylo - Altera_Forum--- Quote Start --- I'm running Quartus 17.0 build 595 lite edition on a windows 10 computer, quad core i7, 2.50 GHz, 16 GB RAM. --- Quote End --- Hi ... am seeing very similar things. Currently I'm using Quartus Prime Lite 16.0, 17.0 and 17.1 for various comparisons and benchmarks. I've been using Intel's "MyFirstFPGA" as a benchmark, with command-line launching on Ubuntu 16.04 server Linux.
On my normal computer this takes 6 minutes (!), so I'm using rent-by-the-hour servers at AWS. with best performance about a minute. Following all with "Info: Version 17.0.0 Build 595 04/25/2017 SJ Lite Edition"git clone --quiet https://github.com/intel-iot-devkit/terasic-de10-nano-kit cd terasic-de10-nano-kit/tutorials/MyFirstFPGA ./build_example.sh
I found this thread at Reddit very good on the same topic, which suggests some interesting alterenatives to using Quartus all day https://www.reddit.com/r/fpga/comments/7gsqro/quartus_turn_off_optimization/ Why does it take so long? Well, during solving of another problem I ran strace (http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/strace.1.html) on the generate portion of qsys and found 17,506,064 one-byte write system calls, to make the files soc_system/synthesis/soc_system_hps_0_hps.svd[ and soc_system.regmap:70.02 sec aws t2.large ( 8 Gbyte, 2 x Xeon CPU E5-2676 v3 @ 2.40GHz) 64.65 sec aws c4.2xlarge (16 Gbyte, 8 x Xeon CPU E5-2666 v3 @ 2.90GHz) 432.07 sec intel dn2800mt ( 4 Gbyte, 4 x Atom CPU N2800 @ 1.86GHz)
I did some quick tests and running the writes together would save about 10 seconds in this one optimisation. I do hope it's not indicative of general code quality. For what it's worth, I've found 16.0 much more responsive. It does feel like command line is much better for these long "batch" processes. Kind regards, Jonathan.4651 open("/home/ubuntu/DE10_NANO_SoC_GHRD/F/synthesis/soc_system_hps_0_hps.svd", O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC, 0666) = 180 4651 write(180, "<", 1) = 1 4651 write(180, "?", 1) = 1 4651 write(180, "x", 1) = 1 4651 write(180, "m", 1) = 1 4651 write(180, "l", 1) = 1 4651 write(180, " ", 1) = 1 (17.5m more ...!) - Altera_Forum
Which compilation phase is signaled? How does the stuck show in compilation report - flow elapsed time?
- Altera_Forum
Hi FvM,
It's not during compilation phase, but after. For example I do a compilation, it ends normally after about 15 minutes. Then when trying to select 'Convert Programming Files...' or 'Quartus programmer' or even 'Signal Tap', the IDE is no more responsive. No way to click on anything. it's completely stuck. Just have to wait sometimes for minutes. And sometimes I'm not patient enough and then I do kill the application. Other example, after a generation in QSYS, it may take minutes before I'm able to click on the start compilation button... Lately I've to kill the application many times a day. -jylo - Altera_Forum--- Quote Start --- Hi ... am seeing very similar things. Currently I'm using Quartus Prime Lite 16.0, 17.0 and 17.1 for various comparisons and benchmarks. I've been using Intel's "MyFirstFPGA" as a benchmark, with command-line launching on Ubuntu 16.04 server Linux. On my normal computer this takes 6 minutes (!), so I'm using rent-by-the-hour servers at AWS. with best performance about a minute. Following all with "Info: Version 17.0.0 Build 595 04/25/2017 SJ Lite Edition"
I found this thread at Reddit very good on the same topic, which suggests some interesting alterenatives to using Quartus all day https://www.reddit.com/r/fpga/comments/7gsqro/quartus_turn_off_optimization/ Why does it take so long? Well, during solving of another problem i ran strace (http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/strace.1.html) on the generate portion of qsys and found 17,506,064 one-byte write system calls, to make the files70.02 sec aws t2.large ( 8 Gbyte, 2 x Xeon CPU E5-2676 v3 @ 2.40GHz) 64.65 sec aws c4.2xlarge (16 Gbyte, 8 x Xeon CPU E5-2666 v3 @ 2.90GHz) 432.07 sec intel dn2800mt ( 4 Gbyte, 4 x Atom CPU N2800 @ 1.86GHz)soc_system/synthesis/soc_system_hps_0_hps.svd[ and soc_system.regmap
I did some quick tests and running the writes together would save about 10 seconds in this one optimisation. I do hope it's not indicative of general code quality. For what it's worth, I've found 16.0 much more responsive. It does feel like command line is much better for these long "batch" processes. Kind regards, Jonathan. --- Quote End --- So has your Windows 10 system have the latest Meltdown/Spectre patches applied?
- Altera_Forum
Have you tried running the same Quartus commands on the Windows command line, instead of using the GUI, and tried disabling your virus scanner?
BTW Jonathan, I get the following results from my Windows 10 PC, i7-8550U 4 Core 1.8Ghz 8GB, using cygwin64 and Quartus 17.1 lite: time ./build_example.sh real 1m34.358s user 0m0.076s sys 0m0.153s - Altera_Forum
Once again, my problem is NOT a problem of compilation time!
It is a problem of frozen GUI AFTER the compilation process, or QSYS generation process, or SignalTap process, or ... whatever process HAS completed. Compilation time is long, as it has always been the case (and during that time we can even do anything else). But once the compilation is over, you are eager to test it, and it is very frustrating to be stuck in front of a non responsive GUI, just waiting that it allows you to click on the next button... Maybe should I definitely abandon the GUI... I'm just not that much used with command lines... -jylo - Altera_Forum--- Quote Start --- your Windows 10 system --- Quote End --- ... it's Ubuntu 16.04 Linux. But yes, those patches for whatever system will make the system calls even more expensive. Kind regards, Jonathan.
- Altera_Forum--- Quote Start --- NOT a problem of compilation time! It is a problem of frozen GUI AFTER the compilation process --- Quote End --- Jylo, I confess I'd misunderstood, apologies. I gave up on the GUI on the Ubuntu system because it didn't appear to be reliably reporting the progress of the sub-processes. Jonathan.
