Quartus II Settings File Reference Manual - Altera

4–172 Chapter 4: Analysis & Synthesis Assignments
SYNTHESIS_EFFORT
SYNTHESIS_EFFORT
Type
Controls the synthesis trade-off between compilation speed and performance and
area. The default is Auto, which means synthesis goes through all its steps. You can
select Fast, which means synthesis skips a number of steps which makes it
approximately 30% faster, but at the cost of performance and area. Altera
recommends that you only use Fast when the Fitter early timing estimate flow is used.
This is because the Fast synthesis results produces a netlist that is slightly harder for
the Fitter to route, thus making the Fitter slower, which cancels out the speed-up of
synthesis. The Fitter early timing estimate runtime is not affected by the synthesis
effort level.
Enumeration
■ Auto
■ Fast
Device Support
This setting can be used in projects targeting any Altera device family.
Notes
This assignment is included in the Analysis & Synthesis report.
Syntax
set_global_assignment -name SYNTHESIS_EFFORT
Example
set_global_assignment -name synthesis_effort fast
Default Value
Auto
Quartus Settings File June 2012 Altera Corporation
Reference Manual