Hong Kong, May 14, 2015 – Altera (NASDAQ: ALTR) announced the introduction of the Spectra-Q™ engine as a core new technology for its proven Quartus® II software. This enables further increased design productivity and reduced development time for next-generation programmable devices. By enabling unprecedented compile times, various types of rapidly traceable design inputs, and drop-in IP integration, the Spectra-Q engine pushes Altera's Quartus II software even further ahead of the industry. Customers can now design and implement at a higher level of abstraction, significantly accelerating design work and rapidly realizing the opportunities and possibilities of next-generation designs. More information about the Spectra-Q engine can be found at www.altera.com/spectraq.

Alex Grbic, Senior Director of Software and IP Marketing at Altera, stated, “As FPGAs and SoCs have become capable of delivering massively enhanced performance by providing millions of logic element capacities, supporting hundreds of interface protocols, and including new hard-implemented function blocks, software design tools have been forced to increase productivity at a pace much faster than the number of logic elements alone. The Spectra-Q engine is a game-changing combination of software technologies that drastically accelerates design work by reducing design iterations, while continuously enabling the industry’s fastest compile times.”

The Spectra-Q engine employs faster algorithms and enables incremental design modifications without compiling the entire design. This engine also utilizes a hierarchical database, allowing users to maintain IP block placement and routing information while making changes to parts of the design. This ensures a stable design, avoids unnecessary timing termination, and reduces compilation time. Furthermore, by including a common high-level design compiler, this new engine achieves higher quality results and enables tighter integration between Quartus II software and various front-end tools.

BluePrint™ Platform Designer Tool

Based on the Spectra-Q engine, we have built the industry's first platform design tool called BluePrint, enabling designers to explore architectures and specify interfaces more efficiently. This tool reduces design iterations by allowing designers to proactively review and create valid I/O placements using real-time fitter checking. Furthermore, by including clock and core planning capabilities, the tool can significantly reduce the number of design iterations required to achieve timing closure.

Design inputs that can be rapidly traced in various ways

In addition, this new Spectra-Q engine enables software, hardware, and DSP designers to quickly track design inputs. By providing various design flows, it allows designers to design on FPGAs more efficiently using their familiar languages or design environments. This new engine is designed not only to support the latest HDL languages but also Altera's new A++ Compiler for HLS™ (high-level synthesis), allowing IP cores to be written in C or C++, which enables faster simulation and IP creation and thus significantly improves productivity.

Quartus II software and IP version 15.0 provided

Altera also announced the release of its Quartus II software version 15.0, which offers the highest performance and productivity in the FPGA industry. This latest version continues to achieve the industry's fastest compilation times by leveraging Altera's proven software tools. Furthermore, Altera enables maximum design productivity by adding the latest standards-based cores to its optimized IP suite. Quartus II software v15.0 includes the new Hybrid Memory Cube and HDMI 2.0 MegaCore for use with Arria® 10 FPGAs and SoCs. Additionally, it upgrades functionality and device support for its widely used JESD204B cores, supporting up to 9.255 Gbps with Arria V and up to 5 Gbps with Cyclone V. Moreover, by including IP debug toolkits for External Memory Interfaces (EMIF) and PCI Express, it allows for testing and debugging of IP cores using these additional access points, thereby enabling faster prototyping and shortening verification tasks.

Price and supply

The Spectra-Q engine is available through an early access program. Customers wishing to participate in this program can contact their local sales office. The Subscription Edition and free Web Edition of Quartus II software v15.0 are available for download right now at www.altera.com/download. Altera’s software subscription program unifies software products and maintenance costs into a single annual subscription fee. Subscribing to this program provides licenses for Quartus II software, ModelSim®-Altera Edition, and the IP Base Suite, which includes Altera’s widely used key IP cores. The annual software subscription fee is $2,995 for a node-limited PC license and can be purchased from Altera’s eStore.