Why does my design fail to pass the Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro Edition Software “Support Logic Generation” phase when using a combination of the F-Tile Ethernet Intel® FPGA Hard IP with PTP variant and an F-Tile PMA Direct PHY variant?

Description

Due to a problem in the Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro Edition Software version 21.2, the combination of an F-Tile Ethernet Intel® FPGA Hard IP with PTP variant and an F-Tile PMA Direct PHY variant will fail to pass the Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro “Support Logic Generation” phase with the following error message: “Error (21842): Solver failed to find a solution”.

Resolution

To work around this problem in Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro Edition Software version 21.2 perform the following steps:

1. Navigate to the <pma_direct_variant>/synth directory.
2. Open the “directphy_f_hip.sv” file.
3. Change the following lines FROM:

a. localparam  local_bb_f_ehip_e400g_ptp0_aib2_div2_clk = bb_f_ehip_e400g_ptp0_aib2_div2_clk;

b. localparam  local_bb_f_ehip_e400g_ptp1_aib2_div2_clk = bb_f_ehip_e400g_ptp1_aib2_div2_clk;

TO:

a. localparam  local_bb_f_ehip_e400g_ptp0_aib2_div2_clk = "__BB_DONT_CARE__"; 

b. localparam  local_bb_f_ehip_e400g_ptp1_aib2_div2_clk = "__BB_DONT_CARE__";  

This problem is fixed starting with the Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro Edition software version 21.4.