Altera Quartus II Software v13.0 Enables World’s Fastest FPGA Designs

The most difficult to close designs targeting high-end 28 nm Stratix V FPGAs will see compilation times slashed by 50 percent on average compared to the previous software release. Quartus II software v13.0 enables designs targeting Stratix V FPGAs to achieve the fastest Fmax of any FPGA in the industry with a two speed-grade advantage over the nearest competitor.

The release also includes enhancements to the development suite’s high-level C-based, system-/IP-based, and model-based design flows:

• SDK for OpenCL opens the world of massively-parallel FPGA-based accelerators to software programmers without FPGA experience. The OpenCL parallel programming model delivers the fastest path from code-to-hardware implementation. Software programmers targeting FPGAs achieve higher performance at significantly lower power compared to alternative hardware architectures. See today’s press release for more information on the SDK for OpenCL and for more information on Altera’s newly announced Preferred Board Partner Program for OpenCL.

• Qsys system integration tool provides expanded support for ARM-based Cyclone V SoCs. Now Qsys can generate industry-standard AMBA AHB and APB bus interfaces in the FPGA fabric. Further, these interfaces comply with ARM’s TrustZone requirements, allowing customers to partition an entire SoC-FPGA-based system between a secure world for critical system resources and a non-secure world for everything else.

• DSP Builder design tool enables system developers to effectively implement high-performance fixed- and floating-point algorithms into their DSP designs. New features include additional math.h functions with enhanced precision and rounding parameterization, parameterizable FFT blocks for fixed- and floating-point FFTs, more efficient folding capability and improved resource sharing.

For additional information about the features offered in Quartus II software v13.0, visit Altera’s What’s New in Quartus II Software web page.

Pricing and Availability

Both the Subscription Edition and the free Web Edition of Quartus II software v13.0 are now available for download. Altera’s software subscription program makes it easy to obtain Altera design software by consolidating software products and maintenance charges into one annual subscription payment. Subscribers receive Quartus II software, the ModelSim-Altera Starter edition, and a full license to the IP Base Suite, which includes Altera’s most popular IP (DSP and memory) cores. The annual software subscription is $2,995 for a node-locked PC license and is available for purchase at Altera's eStore. The Altera SDK for OpenCL is currently available as a separate download on Altera’s website. The annual software subscription for the SDK for OpenCL is $995 for a node-locked PC license.