Date: 12/07/2010

New development software for FPGA boards from Altera

Altera has released the Quartus II development software version 10.0, which altera claims delivers 2X to 3X faster compile times than the nearest competitor for high-density designs. This device supports Altera's 28-nm Stratix V FPGA family.

The main features of Quartus II software v10.0 are:
1. Supports Stratix V GX and Stratix V GS FPGAs.
2. It implements an advanced place and route algorithms, TimeQuest timing analyzer and PowerPlay power technology.
3. The new transceiver toolkit helps PCB designers to efficiently verify transceiver signal integrity before or in parallel with application design development.
4. The transceiver toolkit also enables users to maximize signal timing margins and eye openings fine- tuning transceiver parameters and viewing bit error ratio (BER).
5. It is equipped with a GUI that gives high-speed designers access to all the transceiver settings including pre-emphasis, equalization, VOD, EyeQ eye viewer and sampling position.
6. It works with Quartus Integrated Synthesis for small design changes to deliver a compile time reduction averaging 50 percent compared to a full compile.
7. New 10Gb Ethernet MAC, 10G Base-R and XAUI PHY MegaCores functions are available.
8. DDR2 and DDR3 SDRAM Controller MegaCores functions supporting ALTMEMPHY and UniPHY are included in the Quartus II Subscription Edition software as part of the Altera IP Base Suite.
9. Facilitates design reuse by creating a custom component library with new post-fit netlists support in addition to existing post-synthesis netlists support.
10. The Quartus II Web Edition software supports Linux. Quartus II software now support Windows 7 and added SUSE Enterprise 11 support in addition to version 10 support.

"Our Stratix V family of devices dramatically raises the level of integration featured in next-generation FPGAs, making it imperative we continue to deliver the highest productivity software solutions," said Chris Balough, senior director of software, embedded, and DSP marketing at Altera. "The features added to our latest Quartus II software enable us to continue a 2X to 3X compile time advantage over the competition so our customers can get their designs to market as quickly as possible."

Altera has also announced new self service licensing center for Quartus II Subscription Edition software users to setup and manage software and intellectual property (IP) licenses online at any time.

Price: The annual software subscription is US$2,995 for a node-locked PC license.

Availability:
Both the Subscription Edition and the free Web Edition of Quartus II software v10.0 are now available for download.

For additional information visit: www.altera.com/q2whatsnew.