This script installs Intel FPGA's Quartus Prime software on remote servers which don't have a web browser or a GUI. It makes it easy to download across a number of servers, and to run as part of a scripted build.
Syntax:
usage: quartus-install.py [-h] [--download-only] [--install-only] [--prune]
version target device [device ...]
Download and install Quartus.
positional arguments (required):
version Quartus version, eg 18.0pro, 17.1lite, 16.1std.
Supplying an invalid version will return the supported versions.
target Directory to install Quartus in
device Device to download/install in Quartus. Supported:
a2 Arria II
a5 Arria V
a5gz Arria V GZ
a10 Arria 10
c4 Cyclone IV
c5 Cyclone V
c10gx Cyclone 10 GX
c10lp Cyclone 10 LP
m2 MAX II
m5 MAX V
m10 MAX 10
s4 Stratix IV
s5 Stratix V
s10 Stratix 10
dsp DSP Builder
eds ARM EDS
opencl OpenCL toolkit
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--list-versions Print the Quartus versions supported
--list-parts Print the devices and other pieces we can download
--download-only Only download, don't install
--install-only Only install, don't download
--prune Delete install files when finished
--nosetup Don't download Quartus setup frontend
--parallel PARALLEL, -j PARALLEL
Number of parallel download connections
--fix-libpng Build and add libpng12.so binary to Quartus library dir
(needed for recent Ubuntu among others)
--check-urls Check whether the URLs in the database are fetchable
--foreign EXPERIMENTAL support for emulating Quartus on aarch64
Ubuntu LTS (eg Apple M1 via UTM). Requires sudo, see
below for details.
Example usage:
quartus-install.py 18.1std /opt/intelFPGA/18.1std a10 s4 s5 c4 c5 m10
You will also need the 'aria2' tool installed (available as a Ubuntu package) to perform parallel downloads (since the Akamai servers have limited per-file bandwidth, it is most efficient to download all the pieces in parallel if you are on a high-bandwidth link).
Please note that installing Quartus implies acceptance of Intel FPGA's EULA for the appropriate version(s) you download.
Since it's necessary to extract the URLs manaully from the Intel website, only a limited set of Quartus versions are supported. Patches/PRs welcome!
Theo Markettos
Quartus has native x86 binaries, and Intel only supplies those for Linux and Windows. So people with Arm-based systems, eg modern Macs, are out of luck? Quartus will run in MacOS where Rosetta would help it, since Rosetta does work in VMs thanks to UTM ultilized Apple Virtualization framework. Performance in virtualized VM is absolutely awesome.
The pre-install.sh script will:
- Install spice-vdagent for clipboard passthrough.
- Mount Rosetta binary and shared folder.
- Setup Rosetta.
- Add support for amd64 architecture to install amd64 packages.
To run the script, you should provide the macOS version as an argument, ensuring that it is greater than or equal to 13 (because the Virtualization framework first release on Ventura). Execute the script with sudo privileges:
sudo ./pre-install.sh <macOS_version>
After the installation, please restart the VM for changes to take effect.
To install Quartus with patches for an aarch64 VM, install Quartus as
above but pass the --foreign flag, which will install necessary packages
and patch your install.
Currently, there are issues with installing Quartus on macOS because it relies on some
instructions that aren't supported by Rosetta, which can cause the quartus-install.py
script to crash after Quartus is installed (before installing devices/QuestaSim). If you
encounter this problem, you'll need to extract the device .qdz files and manually copy
them to the Quartus folder. And you have to install QuestaSim separately by running the
.run file with the --mode text argument.
Following that, execute the foreign-pre.sh script to install the required dependency
packages. Afterward, run the foreign-post.sh $QUARTUS_ROOTDIR script to apply patches
to the qenv within Quartus.
It's possible that this problem will be resolved in future macOS updates when Apple includes the necessary instructions.
Caveats:
- This is extremely experimental and fragile. It is highly likely to break. Assume it's already broken and hope for positive surprises.
- Don't expect build performance to be amazing, but at least you can run Quartus (maybe).
- This has been tested with Quartus Lite 20.1.1, Quartus Standard 22.1 (cracked), Quartus Pro 23.1, although in theory it should work for other versions, it may need some tweaking (especially Quartus Pro). Only the main Quartus, Platform Designer, and Eclipse have been tested, not all the many other pieces.
- This is only tested on Debian 12 (aarch64). It will probably work with other Ubuntu or Debian versions, but they haven't been tested. Other distros will need to install different packages.
- Some Java parts (eg Platform Designer), Fitting process will spin forever if more than one core is available to the VM. It is suspected this is due to a memory ordering difference between x86 (TSO) and Apple Silicon (weak ordering). While M1 can switch into a TSO mode (as it does when Rosetta is running), for Quartus Lite it's simpler to limit the VM to one core as it doesn't use multicore for builds anyway. Another option is to edit the wrapper scripts for binaries (eg in $QUARTUS_ROOTDIR/bin/) and prefix the invocation of the binary (at the bottom) with 'taskset 1 ' to force only Quartus binaries to use a single core. More experimentation needed here - it's possible the C++ parts of Quartus may work better multicore than the Java parts. [In case anyone asks, libccl_sqlite3_jdbc_jni_bridge.so uses the JNI so we can't just use the aarch64 JVM, as it needs to link with x86 libraries].