2.1. Quartus Prime Design Suite Overview - 2026-03-02

Altera FPGA Software Installation and Licensing
Version
25.3

Quartus® Prime Software Editions

The Quartus® Prime software is available in three editions based on your design requirements:

Table 1.   Quartus® Prime Software Editions
  Pro Edition Standard Edition Lite Edition
Optimized to support the advanced features in Altera® FPGAs and SoCs with the following device families:
  • Agilex™ 3
  • Agilex™ 5
  • Agilex™ 7
  • Stratix® 10
  • Arria® 10
  • Cyclone® 10 GX
Includes extensive support for earlier device families in addition to the following device families:
  • Cyclone® 10 LP
  • MAX® 10
An ideal entry point to Altera® ’s high-volume device families and is available as a free download with no license file required.

Supported Features

The following is the Quartus® Prime feature support matrix:

Figure 1.  Quartus® Prime Feature Support Matrix

Supported Altera® FPGA Developmental Tools

The Quartus® Prime software suite supports the following Altera® FPGA development tools:

  • Questa* Altera® FPGA Edition : Simulates FPGA designs using Altera® -specific simulation libraries. It includes all features of Siemens EDA Questa* Core, including behavioral simulation, HDL test benches, and Tcl scripting.
  • Advanced Link Analyzer : Analyzes jitter/noise and evaluates high-speed serial link performance. It is an ideal predesign tool supporting Altera® FPGA IBIS-AMI standards and enhanced models to help you understand how Altera® FPGA solutions can fit your system requirements.
  • Altera SoC FPGA Embedded Development Suite (SoC EDS): A comprehensive tool suite for embedded software development on Altera® SoC FPGAs.
  • Ashling* RiscFree* IDE for Altera : Integrated development environment for creating embedded applications on the RISC-V-based Nios® V soft processors and the Arm*-based hard processor system.
  • DSP Builder : Supports a model-based design flow from algorithms to hardware in a common environment.
  • oneAPI Base Toolkit : Enables you to target FPGAs for heterogeneous acceleration and simulate entire system flows by abstracting some parts of the hardware.
  • Simics Simulator for Altera FPGAs : A full-system simulator that supports defining, developing, and deploying virtual platforms.
  • FPGA AI Suite : Provides several components to help in enabling Artificial Intelligence (AI) and creating optimized FPGA AI platforms efficiently.
  • Power Thermal Analyzer : Estimates your design's power consumption and provides thermal design parameters for Altera® FPGA devices, such as Agilex™ 3, Agilex™ 5, Agilex™ 7, and Stratix® 10.
  • Quartus Prime Pro Embedded Edition: provides the Quartus Prime Pro Edition Programmer, Platform Designer, the Nios V processor, and IP board files to support your embedded development.
  • Quartus Prime driver installer: A lightweight installer that installs the drivers only.