End of 2022 - Licence Expiry warning

[Migry]

I am a maker hobbiest and I have completed projects on old Altera parts such as the Cyclone FPGA family and the MAX II CPLD family.

I compile RTL using Quartus II 64-Bit Version 13.0.1 Build 232 06/12/2013 Web Edition, because this "legacy" software supports the old Altera products which I use. Support for my preferred Altera parts has been DROPPED in later versions of Quartus.

SO before anyone suggests installing the latest and greatest version, this is NOT a solution.

When I launched Quartus today, I got the following alert box.

 

Now to be honest, I am unsure where Quartus is getting the current licence information from. It's certainly NOT the LM_LICENCE_FILE variable!

 

I wondered if the warning was simply nothing more than a warning (triggered by the end of year date), and I can continue to use this software version "as is" with no licence file?

In any case I googled to find out how I can generate a new licence file. I visited the "Intel FPGA Self-Service Licensing Center" and appeared to cut a new licence which was emailed to me. If I point to the new licence (in the above window) I get the same expiry warning.

During licence generation, I was surprised that there was NO OPTION to select the version of Quartus you are using, so I wonder if Intel ONLY support the latest version, and therefore the licence file generated is incompatible???

TBH I'm totally confused.

[sstrell]

License files are version-agnostic.  They are just for a yearly subscription.

But the old web edition didn't require a license.  Neither does the current Lite edition (basically the same as the web edition).  If you click "Renew Software" or "Web License Update" what happens?

[Migry]

"Renew Software" tries to bring up Internet Explorer, which now defaults to Microsoft Edge, which goes to a generic Intel FPGA web page => no help whatsoever.

"Web Licence Update" brings up the following

 

None of the options are helpful.

Perhaps it simply is that the software does not need a licence for the web pack.

FWIW, I did find an old license file from 2018, which was in FlexLM format. I have no re-collection when or how it was generated.

[AR_A_Intel · Accepted solution]

Hello,

From my understanding, the Quartus Lite/web Edition software requires no license, so it will continue working even after maintenance subscription expires. If there is a subscription error message appear. This is the normal behavior of the Lite/web Edition software and you can ignore the message. Please continue with the compilations and report to us back if the compilation is not successful with error message in Quartus.

Hope this information is helpful.

[Migry]

Thank you for the confirmation.

I can't help but wonder if intel acquired the Quartus source code, when they acquired Altera?

Not that I expect Intel to modify and re-release it in any way!

I simply hope that Intel will continue to "support" (make available for download + documentation) these older Altera products, since they are still relevant today, not only for hobbiests like myself, but also for companies who support old products using these extremely useful Altera parts.

Just FYI, it is still possible to buy Cyclone II FPGA dev boards from China, and they still are reasonably cheap. They are perfect for getting into the world of FPGA design and learning to code in Verilog/VHDL. "Intel executives" please be aware that not everyone can afford $500 for a genuine Intel FPGA development board !

Case closed

[AR_A_Intel]

Thanks for your update information. I will feedback your suggestion to internal team for future release enhancement. This thread will be transitioned to community support. If you have a new question, feel free to open a new thread to get the support from Intel experts. Otherwise, the community users will continue to help you on this thread. Thank you