ALTPLL Megawizard crashes

[Altera_Forum]

I have an ALTPLL in my design. 

 When I try to change it, the Megawizard gets to the 2nd screen, then stops responding to input.  After a while, a pop-up comes along and says that it's not responding, and offers to kill it for me.  And, near as I can tell, the configuration is now whacked.  This is Quartus-15.0 WebPack on Linux (CentOS 7)

[Altera_Forum]

A little update: I'm still poking at it, because I can't finish the design without it (and if I don't finish it, I don't get paid). 

 It worked for an hour or so, then stopped working again. It worked long enough for me to spot some oddities, the biggest being that if you turn off the reset input it still creates one and forces you to export the conduit.  While I was trying to figure that one out it stopped working - now it's back to the hang situation.  When it hangs it takes one CPU core up to 100% and keeps it there - the longest I've waited is 15 minutes - and you have to kill it to get back to Qsys.  For "fun" I installed 14.1 on a different machine. It behaves the same way, and (oddly) when one works the other will work, and when one hangs the other will hang. This is on two different machines, two different versions of Linux, and two different versions of Quartus. The only thing that's consistent with the crash/hang is the time of day.

[Altera_Forum]

More poking around - I really don't want to get a payday-advance to pay rent this month. 

 In version 13.1 the ALTPLL wizard never comes up. The 'Add Module' screen runs for a bit, changes to 'Edit Module', then goes right back to Qsys.  In version 13.0 the ALTPLL wizard will finish. Goodness knows if the output is usable; that's the area in my design that seems to be causing all the problems.  In 13.1 'Altera PLL' will finish. That IP is greyed out in current versions which makes me nervous about using it.  Note to Altera: The ALTPLL wizard seems to have gotten broken starting with version 13.1 - my guess would be that Linux updates since then have rendered it useless.  Question: Does anyone have a work-around? Any chance that this defect will be addressed?

[Altera_Forum]

Hi d_s_klein, 

 What device are you working on? the ALTPLL if the PLL IP for either IV series or the MAX10...   Have you tried to create a new PLL ip based on the device IP catalogue (if you are in QII 15.0) or generate a new PLL through the megawizard (if you are planning to use the QII 13.1)

[Altera_Forum]

Cyclone-IV - Specifically, a EP4CE22F17C6N, the 'device IP catalogue' does not support PLL's, so I'm using the MegaWizard. 

 The ONLY thing I have found that works is to create the ALTPLL in 13.0, and then use it in later versions. That works, so long as you NEVER (never!) try to edit it.  It seems almost certain that it is a defect in the megawizard - I'm wondering just how loud I have to be to get someone that can fix it to acknowledge that it exists.  In the words of Dr. McCoy: "He's dead, Jim."

[Altera_Forum]

I can confirm this issue is in 15.0, but didn’t see it at all in 13.1, latest sp. I am running quartus on Ubuntu. The PLL wizard GUI becomes unresponsive and mega_altpllq is using 100% of one core endlessly, which definitely makes it hard to get stuff done. Text based is more productive.

[Altera_Forum]

Search also for "altpll megawizard hangs under Linux".

[Altera_Forum]

See also http://www.alteraforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=47561

[Altera_Forum]

--- Quote Start ---  I can confirm this issue is in 15.0, but didn’t see it at all in 13.1, latest sp. I am running quartus on Ubuntu. The PLL wizard GUI becomes unresponsive and mega_altpllq is using 100% of one core endlessly, which definitely makes it hard to get stuff done. Text based is more productive.  --- Quote End ---    I have seen it in 13.1, 14.1 and 15.0. The thread you pointed me at (below) is specifically about 14.1, and the trick of re-sizing the window does not work for me. I like this quote: " Since this is a valid bug, I think Altera should look into the bug. "   I do not know anything about text based - other than to edit the XML file(s).  What is strange is that it will work every now and then - I got it (altpll megawizard in 15.0) to work twice - in about 50 tries. And to make it stranger, when 15.0 works, so does 14.1 and 13.1 - when it does not, 13.0sp1 is the most modern version that does work.  This is really making me wish I had chosen a different FPGA vendor, and will colour the recommendations I make to clients.

[Altera_Forum]

After the last Linux update, the ALTPLL Megawizard aborts at startup. It starts loading then exits - you can see the component flash into Qsys, then it disappears. 

 If it were not for the fact that I have clients waiting for product, this would be comical.  Sigh. Does ANYONE have a tip or trick to get this working? PLEASE?

[LFrie2]

Well, sort of...

Sadly this is still broken under Quartus 18.1 under Linux (I had this problem under Ubuntu so, because the official line is that Ubuntu is not supported, I installed a system with Centos 7 for the sole purpose of (hopefully) being able to run Quartus without so much flakiness but alas it still [sometimes] behaves badly under CentOS as well). However: I have found that sometimes when the ALTPLL Megawizard goes into its unresponsive-and-burning-99%-CPU routine if I leave it alone for ten minutes or so and go make a cup of coffee it sorts itself out and all subsequent pages after the first work. However other times it never comes around. I've also had a similar problem with the on-chip-memory wizard as well. Ultimately I really wish they'd admit that the whole Megawizard thing is a lost cause and just document clearly and in a centralized location the TCL commands to create all these IP variants and hard block instances from the command line with no GUI (because it seems to be the GUI that's going sideways, not the actual underlying code that does the work to generate the instance information by filling out its template).

[Astrolad]

Under system requirements, Ubuntu 14/16/18.04 LTS are explicitly supported. It's a generic problem. Every IP wizard I've tried fail most of the time on Linux. Sometimes on Windows as well.

[Altera_Forum]

--- Quote Start ---  the trick of re-sizing the window does not work for me.   --- Quote End ---    It sounds like you are instantiating PLLs inside of QSYS. I don’t have too much experience with that as I typically instantiate them at the top level with the standalone qmegawiz command line application. It is started from the ip catalog in recent versions of the quartus GUI.   One definitely needs to be diligent to expand the window first before touching any other part of the PLL GUI, to avoid the 100% of the CPU core lock-up.   Jeff

[Altera_Forum]

--- Quote Start ---  It sounds like you are instantiating PLLs inside of QSYS. I don’t have too much experience with that as I typically instantiate them at the top level with the standalone qmegawiz command line application. It is started from the ip catalog in recent versions of the quartus GUI.   One definitely needs to be diligent to expand the window first before touching any other part of the PLL GUI, to avoid the 100% of the CPU core lock-up.   Jeff  --- Quote End ---    Jeff,  Yes, the ALTLL megawizard is Qsys function.   It is hard to re-size a screen that is displayed for less than a second.  Thanks for helping -

[Altera_Forum]

Did you free up some memory resources before loading the PLL in Qsys? Or you can try increasing the required memory setting in Settings>IP Settings>Max Qsys memory usage> 1GB. By default, it is set to 500MB.

[Altera_Forum]

As of August 20, 2015 and Quartus 15 Service Pack 2, it is still broken.

[Altera_Forum]

I confirm this problem on 64-bit linux both fedora and ubuntu with Quartus 15.0. Works on Windows though.  

On Linux, I changed the window manager to metacity and used gnome-tweak-tool to try different combinations of themes and disabling effects.  Now the megawizard finishes but does not produce any output into Qsys. This is very annoying.

[Altera_Forum]

OK The megawizard ALTPLL plugin works from OUTSIDE Qsys but not INSIDE. I think this is some bad message going on between the two.

[TJorg2]

Still a problem in 19.1 under Ubuntu but resizing the window works for me.

[AHoch4]

Ubuntu 18.04LTS, same as TJorg2... Wizard is still not working but with fast enough resizing, the whole system "just" gets very slow and lagging but the wizard is working.

[EagleRay]

I can confirm that after 5 years, this is still a problem. As suggested above I agree that a solid command line interface or just simple text based configuration files would be more helpful than a dysfunctional wizard.