Introduction

Quartus is the name of the software tools provided by Altera for developing logic devices for their families of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). This handout is intended to be a “quick start guide” for using Quartus to develop simple designs from schematics.

Design Flow

You will need to go through the following steps to implement a circuit on an Altera FPGA using Quartus:

  1. Start Quartus and create a project.
  2. Create a schematic of the logic network you are going to implement, and compile it.
  3. Assign FPGA pins to the inputs and outputs of your design.
  4. Connect a prototyping board to the computer using a special “ByteBlaster” cable, and program the device.
  5. Test your design and start at Step 2 again if necessary.