V
Vaughn Betz
Guest
I am pleased to announce that Altera has opened up its Quartus II CAD
suite to university researchers. The Quartus University Interface
Program, or QUIP, toolkit is designed to enable university (or other)
researchers to plug new CAD tools and ideas into the Altera Quartus II
CAD flow.
QUIP describes Altera's devices, interfaces by which data can be sent
into the Quartus II software at various points in the CAD flow, and
data formats in which data can be dumped out of the Quartus II
software. QUIP also includes tutorial and sample programs showing how
to use the various APIs and data file formats. This toolkit enables
researchers to write point CAD tools that perform one CAD optimization
in a new or better way, and integrate their new CAD tool into a
complete CAD flow so they can get realistic results on how this new
idea improves circuit timing, routability, device utilization, compile
time, or other metrics.
You can augment or replace virtually any phase of the Quartus II CAD
flow (e.g. all of synthesis, or logic optimization, or technology
mapping, or placement, etc.) or add new phases (floorplanning,
wire-type routing, physical synthesis, etc.). You can then get
statistics back from the Quartus II CAD suite showing how much your
new tool or algorithm improves circuit timing, routability, device
utilization, or other metrics. You can quickly test new CAD ideas in
an industrial strength tool flow, and avoid having to write a complete
CAD suite to test your ideas.
The benefit to academics is the ability to focus more on innovative
CAD algorithms and tools, and less on putting together entire CAD
flows to test out these new algorithms and tools. In my PhD I spent
five years writing a place and route system, including timing
analyzer, etc., so this would certainly have helped me graduate
faster!
The benefit to us at Altera is (we hope!) more FPGA CAD research, and
research not just on simplified FPGA architectures and on simple
benchmark circuits, but on the full range of problems presented by
today's complex FPGA architectures, and the complex hardware designs
going into those FPGAs.
For more details on QUIP, and to download all the documents,
tutorials, APIs, etc, see
http://www.altera.com/education/univ/quip/quip-overview.html. Feel
free to contact me, or mail quip@altera.com, or post to this
newsgroup, if you have any questions.
Regards,
Vaughn Betz
Altera
suite to university researchers. The Quartus University Interface
Program, or QUIP, toolkit is designed to enable university (or other)
researchers to plug new CAD tools and ideas into the Altera Quartus II
CAD flow.
QUIP describes Altera's devices, interfaces by which data can be sent
into the Quartus II software at various points in the CAD flow, and
data formats in which data can be dumped out of the Quartus II
software. QUIP also includes tutorial and sample programs showing how
to use the various APIs and data file formats. This toolkit enables
researchers to write point CAD tools that perform one CAD optimization
in a new or better way, and integrate their new CAD tool into a
complete CAD flow so they can get realistic results on how this new
idea improves circuit timing, routability, device utilization, compile
time, or other metrics.
You can augment or replace virtually any phase of the Quartus II CAD
flow (e.g. all of synthesis, or logic optimization, or technology
mapping, or placement, etc.) or add new phases (floorplanning,
wire-type routing, physical synthesis, etc.). You can then get
statistics back from the Quartus II CAD suite showing how much your
new tool or algorithm improves circuit timing, routability, device
utilization, or other metrics. You can quickly test new CAD ideas in
an industrial strength tool flow, and avoid having to write a complete
CAD suite to test your ideas.
The benefit to academics is the ability to focus more on innovative
CAD algorithms and tools, and less on putting together entire CAD
flows to test out these new algorithms and tools. In my PhD I spent
five years writing a place and route system, including timing
analyzer, etc., so this would certainly have helped me graduate
faster!
The benefit to us at Altera is (we hope!) more FPGA CAD research, and
research not just on simplified FPGA architectures and on simple
benchmark circuits, but on the full range of problems presented by
today's complex FPGA architectures, and the complex hardware designs
going into those FPGAs.
For more details on QUIP, and to download all the documents,
tutorials, APIs, etc, see
http://www.altera.com/education/univ/quip/quip-overview.html. Feel
free to contact me, or mail quip@altera.com, or post to this
newsgroup, if you have any questions.
Regards,
Vaughn Betz
Altera