Quartus® Prime Standard Edition User Guide: Design Compilation

ID 683283
Date 10/22/2021
Public
Document Table of Contents

2.5.1.3. Partition Design by Functionality and Block Size

Initially, you should partition your design along functional boundaries. In a top-level system block diagram, each block is often a natural design partition. Typically, each block of a system is relatively independent and has more signal interaction internally than interaction between blocks, which helps reduce optimizations between partition boundaries. Keeping functional blocks together means that synthesis and fitting can optimize related logic as a whole, which can lead to improved optimization.
  • Consider how many partitions you want to maintain in your design to determine the size of each partition. Your compilation time reduction goal is also a factor, because compiling small partitions is typically faster than compiling large partitions.
  • There is no minimum size for partitions; however, having too many partitions can reduce the quality of results by limiting optimization. Ensure that the design partitions are not too small. As a general guideline, each partition should contain more than approximately 2,000 logic elements (LEs) or adaptive logic modules (ALMs). If your design is incomplete when you partition the design, use previous designs to help estimate the size of each block.