How to run Intel Quartus® Prime Lite Edition via Remote Desktop

Info

Make sure to check out the follow up article How to run Intel Quartus® Prime Lite Edition via Parallels on a Mac with Apple Silicon (ARM64)

Learn how to run Intel Quartus® Prime Lite Edition via Remote Desktop.

I recently obtained a Terasic DE0-CV FPGA dev board and needed to install/configure licensing for the accompanying Intel® Quartus® Prime Lite Edition FPGA design software.

The Quartus Prime software requires an x86-64 machine running either Windows or Linux, but my laptop is an ARM-based Macbook Pro running macOS which is not supported.

However, I do have an old Intel-based Mac Mini that runs Windows 10 via Bootcamp, so I ended up installing Quartus Prime on that machine. Not wanting to be tied to a desktop, I figured I’d just Remote Desktop into Windows from my MacBook Pro and run the tools remotely. What could go wrong?

Trying and failing Link to heading

After installing the software, I did a quick test to make sure I could launch Quartus and program the DE0-CV board via Remote Desktop. Everything seemed to work fine—until I tried to launch Questa…

After a quick Google search, I discovered that while Quartus® Prime Lite Edition does not require a license, the bundled Questa*-Intel® FPGA Starter Edition does require a license key. Additionally, this page initially seemed to indicate it was not possible to use Questa*-Intel® FPGA Starter Edition via Remote Desktop:

The Questa*-Intel® FPGA Edition software license does not support Remote Desktop access with node-locked, uncounted licenses.

However, it turns out that while Remote Desktop is not supported with node-locked licenses, it is possible to request a free floating license for Questa*-Intel® FPGA Starter Edition which allows running the software via Remote Desktop.

I couldn’t find a guide online that covered how to set this up from start-to-finish, so here’s the process I used to get it all working via Remote Desktop.

Download Quartus® Prime Lite Edition Link to heading

If you haven’t already, download and install Intel® Quartus® Prime Lite Edition. In this guide I installed Version 23.1.1 for Windows. You’ll need to sign in or register for an Intel account if you haven’t already.

Request a license Link to heading

Intel requires that you enroll in the Intel® FPGA Self-Service Licensing Center (SSLC) to request a license for Questa.

Note

Enrollment in the SSLC is not instant; it took a couple hours before I received access after completing the enrollment request.

Once you have access, log in to the SSLC and click on “Sign up for Evaluation or No-Cost Licenses”.

Choose the option for the SW-QUESTA license and click “Next”.

Click “+New Computer” to bring up the “Create Computer” modal. This will allow you to create a new computer profile for use in the licensing portal.

Input the hostname, set the “Computer Type” to “NIC ID”, and specify the NIC ID (i.e. network card MAC address) for the Windows machine that will run the license server, and click “Save”.

Once the computer profile has been created, select it and click “Generate” to generate the license file. A couple minutes later, you should receive a LR-XXXXXX_License.dat license file via email.

Set up the license server Link to heading

Copy the license file to the recommended location C:\flexlm\LR-XXXXXX_License.dat

Edit the license file in a text editor to specify the hostname, NIC ID, and (optionally) port to use for the license server, as well as the path to the mgcld executable¹.

Tip

If you don’t specify a port for SERVER, it will default to 27000. On Windows, it’s recommended to choose a port number outside of the 27000-28000 range, and unique on the machine. On Linux systems, the license manager automatically chooses a free port between 27000 and 27009.

################################################################################
SERVER <HOSTNAME> <NIC ID> <PORT>
VENDOR mgcld C:\intelFPGA_lite\23.1std\questa_fse\win64\mgcld.exe
USE_SERVER
################################################################################

Once the license file is configured, start up lmtools and configure the service to start at boot up time:

C:\intelFPGA_lite\23.1std\questa_fse\win64\lmtools.exe

Make sure “Configuration using Services” is checked:

In the Config Services tab, make sure the correct paths are set and the service is configured to start at power up. (You can set the “Service Name” to whatever you want.)

Finally, we need to configure the service so that Questa can be run locally on the same machine as the server:

Type services.msc into the Windows search bar and hit enter.
Navigate to the name of the Service that was created in LM Tools (“FlexLM Questa Service” in this example).
Right-click it and select “Properties”
Select the “Log On” tab.
Change “Log on as:” to “Local System account” and select “Allow service to interact with desktop”.
Select the “Apply” button.
Start the Service.

Set the LM_LICENSE_FILE environment variable Link to heading

The machine running Quartus/Questa needs to have the LM_LICENSE_FILE environment variable set to the license server. In this case, we’re running the tools and the license server all on the same Windows machine.

Type Edit the system environment variables into the Windows search bar and hit enter.
Click on “Environment Variables”
Under “System variables” click on “New” to add a new system environment variable
Click “OK” to save the new variable.