What is wrong with Quartus II?

[Altera_Forum]

Hello, 

I currently spend more time waiting for Quartus II than conceiving and compiling a whole project. I systematically have to wait for minutes each time a compilation is over, or QSys generated, or whatever action is performed, before being able to get back hand on the application and thus going further. Most of the time it ends by forcing the application to quit and starting it fresh again (and go through a 'clean project' just in case, but not sure it is very efficient...).  Quartus II has never been very user friendly, but nowadays it is absolutely unusable. What to do?  I'm running Quartus 17.0 build 595 lite edition on a windows 10 computer, quad core i7, 2.50 GHz, 16 GB RAM.  Any advice? Thanks -jylo

[Altera_Forum]

Well austin944, I can't tell because I'm now back in 17.0. However, with a 1 TB disk, 750+ GB available, I don't think I ran out of disk space... 

 Example of the day: I started Quartus 17.0, launched Qsys, made a modification, generated the system, closed Qsys, and compiled the project. Unfortunately, the modification were made to the wrong qsys file and the compilation failed (I'm thus 100% sure it has completed!) So I went back to Qsys, modified the right file, generated and came back to Quartus. Before I can do anything, Quartus took already 15 seconds to tell me that I should add the qip file to my design (this qip is already present in the design, of course). Then I clicked on compile, and, this time, I decided to be patient and wait for something to occur. I also started a chronometer. After 2 minutes and 43 seconds Windows stopped saying 'Not Responding' and Quartus started the compilation !!!  Do you have the feeling this is a normal behavior?

[Altera_Forum]

Of course that's not normal behavior.  

I don't think the "Window not responding" problem is necessarily associated with Quartus; it could be an underlying Windows installation or configuration issue. See for example: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-performance-winpc/windows-10-system-unresponsive-programs-not/481e603e-80d5-4374-a147-25478adfec66?auth=1  It is easy to blame an issue on the software that is reporting the problem or appears to have the problem at a superficial level. But Quartus relies on Windows, and if Windows has an issue, then a number of applications may not work correctly.

[Altera_Forum]

I do not blame anybody... I'm just fed up waiting for Quartus... 

However, when the only application that stays for minutes, consuming about 20% of the CPU and apparently not doing anything is Quartus, this one may be suspicious of something. Maybe not alone. There may be an issue of compatibility with all the layers between the processor and the application, including, Bios, Windows, antivirus, Java or whatever.  But I'm sure there is definitely something wrong with this install. And this is why I was posting to this forum, hoping that somebody who might have had the same issue would be able to help... This appears not to be the case and I will thus continue killing Quartus every 15 minutes or so, to avoid having to wait for minutes to continue working...

[Altera_Forum]

I'm not sure the CPU load of 20% is necessarily indicative of any particular problem or lack of problem in Windows or Quartus. In a multi-tasking operating system, an underlying OS process or service can be suspended and not run for minutes at a time and it could cause applications that rely on it to hang or misbehave. Not all applications might use that particular OS service, so you might see some applications fail and some work correctly. The point is that there is nothing here that definitely points to a problem with the 17.0 Quartus installation. OTOH, it does seem like the 17.1 installation was corrupted since it was missing files that I am able to see in my own Windows installation. I would try following the suggestions for debug in the link that I provided and see where that gets you.

[Altera_Forum]

Of course I meant 20% CPU consumed by Quartus task itself...

[Altera_Forum]

I don't think the 20% means that 20% of the CPU cycles are spent executing the Quartus application code itself. 

The Quartus application makes calls to the Windows OS, and I think the 20% number includes that time spent executing Windows OS and driver code on behalf of Quartus. The latter is called "privileged" mode.  This explains it: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/perfguide/2010/09/28/user-mode-versus-privileged-mode-processor-usage/  The task manager only provides very rough performance numbers. In order to drill deeper, you would have to use something like the Windows Performance Monitor. I've attached a screen shot showing a Performance Monitor run during Quartus execution. The Monitor is brought up under  Computer Management->System Tools->Performance->Monitoring Tools.  Then select Add->Process->%Privileged/Processor/User Time-><All instances>->Add->OK This will add all of the processes to the graph. Then you can hover over each line to see what it is measuring and deselect (hide) processes. You may need to select all processes, right click, and select "Scale".  Of course you will want to check the Monitor around the time you see the issue with the Window not responding.  I was surprised to see the MacAfee anti-virus SW running during my Quartus run.

[Altera_Forum]

In case this could remind something to someone who knows the issue and, above all, who knows how to fix it:  

The problem occurs exclusively after a QSYS generate. I indeed spent the whole day debugging and compiling dozens of time the same project and Quartus has always been responsive. Up to when I had to regenerate the design because it was no more fitting in the device and I thus had to change some settings in QSYS... Now it takes again minutes to give back hand to any command... ?!?  My feeling is that Quartus detected that something was changed, and tries to find out what... But why is this so long? Even sometimes requires that Quartus need to be killed in order to continue...?  Thanks -jylo