Intel® Quartus® Prime Software
Intel® Quartus® Prime Design Software, Design Entry, Synthesis, Simulation, Verification, Timing Analysis, System Design (Platform Designer, formerly Qsys)
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Screening patch ID #1509115906 for Quartus Prime version 16.1.2 (Inferred memory bug).

BobJohnson
Beginner
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We have developed products with Cyclone V (5CEFA9F31I7) devices. The firmware images for the Cyclone V devices were created with Quartus Prime version 16.1.2.
Recently, we were made aware of the Quartus inferred dual-port memory bug:
https://www.intel.com/content/altera-www/global/en_us/index/support/support-resources/knowledge-base/tools/2020/why-is-there-seed-dependent-ram-data-corruption-quartus-std.html

We reached out to Intel Support and received the following reply:

Greetings from Intel Customer Support!

We would like to properly set your expectation that your query is out of the scope of our support. Kindly post a query on the Intel Community forum. Go to Browse Community Forums > FPGAs and Programmable Solutions then, post questions on the appropriate subforum topic so that the correct support team can properly assist you.

Please be informed that since our team can no longer assist you from our end, we will now proceed with closing this case now.

Based on this, we are posing our questions in this forum.

Our immediate question is whether this issue is present in the Quartus Prime version 16. 
In the event that it is, we need to screen our FPGA images to identify if those images could be compromised by this Quartus bug. Unfortunately, screening Quartus patches only exists for Quartus versions 18 and up. We require a patch for Quartus 16.1.2 (ID #1509115906).
 A significant effort would be required to upgrade our FPGA images to Quartus 20.1 including months of regression testing of the affected products. We are reluctant to upgrade these images unless we know they are compromised.

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Kenny_Tan
Moderator
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Is your design using inferred RAMs in their design? 

If you are using inferred RAM, are you observing any incorrect RAM behaviour or seeing any hardware issue?

If the answer is no, then this issue will not be impacted to their design. It also will not be impacted if you are using instantiated RAM IP.


Currently, we only provided screening patches for the recent 2 years of Quartus Std releases. Patch request will be reviewed by case basis. 


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BobJohnson
Beginner
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Should we be concerned with the following messages:
"Inferred altsyncram megafunction ..." in our map.rpt files?
(associated with Quartus FIR filters for backpressure support, and Qsys clock-crossing bridges)

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Kenny_Tan
Moderator
753 Views

Nope. Another quick way to verify is to back up your design. Upgrade your design temporally to 181, run the screening patch to verify that you are impacted.


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Kenny_Tan
Moderator
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any further queries?


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Kenny_Tan
Moderator
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We do not receive any response from you to the previous reply that we have provided. Please post a response in the next 15 days to allow me to continue to support you. After 15 days, this thread will be transitioned to community support. The community users will be able to help you with your follow-up questions. 


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