Quartus Prime is programmable logic device design software produced by Altera; prior to Intel's separation of Altera, the software was called Intel Quartus Prime, and prior to the acquisition of Altera by Intel, it was called Altera Quartus Prime, and earlier Altera Quartus II. Quartus Prime enables analysis and synthesis of HDL designs, which enables the developer to compile their designs, perform timing analysis, examine RTL diagrams, simulate a design's reaction to different stimuli, and configure the target device with the programmer. Quartus Prime includes an implementation of VHDL and Verilog for hardware description, visual editing of logic circuits, and vector waveform simulation.
Quartus Prime software features include:
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The Lite Edition is the free version of Quartus Prime Standard Edition and lacks certain features such as partial reconfiguration, design partitioning, register retiming and transceiver link analysis tools. This edition provides compilation and programming for a limited number of Altera FPGA devices, mainly the low-cost Cyclone FPGAs, as well as the MAX family of CPLDs. This enables small developers and educational institutions access to development tools without overhead from the cost of development software.
The Standard Edition supports an extensive number of FPGA devices and is more full-featured than the Lite Edition, but requires a paid license.
The Pro Edition is a newer version of the tools with the latest features and supporting recent Altera FPGA device families. Typically the Pro Edition requires a paid license, but for certain device families, Altera offers a free license.