Introducing Questa Base

Questa Base is the next-generation simulator for ModelSim users. It is built on the customer-proven QuestaSim engine and innovations, and comes with a host of new features and functionality from the Questa Simulator family.

Questa Base is a high-end simulator with nearly all of the Questa Core features but with a simulation speed similar to ModelSim. As with other QuestaSim products, Visualizer is now included for free.

Why move from ModelSim to Questa Base?

Siemens EDA has introduced Questa Base, a new Questa simulation configuration specifically tailored to our ModelSim user community. Questa Base contains all the current performance and features you are familiar with in ModelSim, plus enhanced features and flows including:

1. Push-button compile & data management

Less scripting, less switches to remember, less design files management, less mistakes

Questa Base supports the new Qrun flow to improve compilation turnaround and simplify simulation runs. Qrun is a single flow “wrapper” that automatically invokes the appropriate VHDL, SystemC, or SystemVerilog compiler and optimizer based on the command line arguments. Qrun distributes the source files to the appropriate compilers and the switches to the appropriate tools, there’s no need to know which tool a specific switch or source file goes to, Qrun handles that for you.

2. Built-in optimizations on your design

Optimizations automatically performed on all designs, maximising performance

Questa Base is built on the customer-proven QuestaSim engine, which uses aggressive global compile and optimization algorithms to achieve industry-leading performance. For Questa Base this means fast debug simulation, a smaller database, and full debug visibility.

3. Next-generation debugger

Including premium debug solution with every Questa Simulator

As with other QuestaSim products, Visualizer is now included for free. Visualizer provides a full debugging experience and allows you to root-cause bugs faster, with an improved waveform window, and new features like: driver/receiver tracing, advanced searching, Finite State Machine debug & cross probing, schematics with smart hierarchical flattening, schematic exploration, biometric search, and more.

4. Many More New features and commands….

Checkpoint and Restore, 64-bit Windows and Linux support, mixed language as standard, Questa Clipboard, Questa Xprop, Visualizer Causality Tracing, improved GUI, improved customisability and Quality of Life features.