How to simulate an Altera megafunction using Modelsim SE

Question

___Hi, everyone. I have instantiated a PLL using the Megawizard in Quartus II. Then I wanted to simulate it using ModelSim SE because Quartus II 10.1 doesn't have a built-in simulator. I copied builtInPLL.vhd (output of the Megawizard) and PLL_tb.vhd (testbench) to the directory of the ModelSim project. But when I compiled builtInPLL.vhd, it gave out the following error messages:

Error: builtInPLL.vhd(39): Library altera_mf not found.
Error: builtInPLL.vhd(40): (vcom-1136) Unknown identifier "altera_mf".

relevant lines in builtInPLL.vhd:

LIBRARY altera_mf;
USE altera_mf.all;

I googled these messages but found nothing really helpful. I copied altera_mf.vhd from ..\eda\sim_lib and compiled it with builtInPLL.vhd. Modelsim still gave me the messages above. And many files with suffix .dat and .dbs were created in the work directory. What are they?

Where is the library altera_mf located? And how can I simulate a megafunction using ModelSim SE.
Any help will be appreciated.Thanks.

Solution 1

Standard ModelSim SE does not come with Altera library support, so you have to install the Altera specific libraries like altera_mf. There is an example Tcl script for this at ModelSim Tcl Scripting Examples under Library Setup Script (VHDL).

As an alternative you can consider using the ModelSim-Altera version, which comes with pre-installed Altera libraries, like the altera_mf. This ModelSim version can be found at ModelSim-Altera Software. There is even a free version called "ModelSim-Altera Starter Edition".

Solution 2

Quartus II also has an interactive tool for this:

Tools > Launch Simulation Library Compiler > ...