Keeping things out of a LogicLock region

[Altera_Forum]

Using Q9.1 and targeting HardCopy4, I'm having some trouble reliably placing some memories. I have a LogicLock region that bounds the placement for a set of M9Ks (selected by wildcard). Unfortunately, other M9Ks end up in this region and crowd out some of the wildcarded set. I don’t want to use the “Reserved = On (or Limited)” because I don’t want to exclude all other logic. I have “Soft” unset, so I’m a little surprised that any of the wildcarded set is outside the boundary (there is enough room for the wildcarded set). “Priority” doesn’t seem like it would help since I only have 1 wildcard for this region. Is there any way to make my wildcarded set win over other M9Ks? Thanks.

[Altera_Forum]

I have another way around this: If you create a child LL region to only encompass the M9Ks within your Parent (original) LL region, you could set the properties of the child to RESERVED=ON (or Limited).  

 This doesn't directly answer your question, but may be food for thought.  Cheers, tjd

[Altera_Forum]

Thanks. Interesting point. I had been thinking along these lines. However, I don’t think this guarantees a solution. In my view, the “parent” only affects 2 things, the child LL location, and if non-child-member logic is allowed in the child region. For the location, since my child origin is specified (“Locked”), there is no decision to be made about where in the parent the child would be located. For allowing non-member logic to be in the child region, I think that’s the “Reserved” setting, and I don’t want “On”, since I need to allow a lot of other Hcells to reside there. Picking an appropriate “Parent” with Reserved=Limited seems like it would only tune what logic would be precluded. I guess I could pick the Parent Region to be something that includes the M9Ks that are bumping out my desired M9Ks, but I don’t currently have an LL that is that set of M9Ks. If I made one that was, I guess I would have to make sure it doesn’t subvert the “free rein” that those M9Ks currently have (which is no rein). But even if this method did keep the current rogue M9Ks out, I would think there’s a chance that other M9Ks could cause the same trouble. If you still think this can work, let me know and I’ll try it. Otherwise, it looks like I need a variation of the Reserved=On setting that precludes logic by element type, similar to the “Excluded Element Types” attribute for a region's member selection. It doesn't look like this exists, and I'm sure requesting a new software feature is not quick. However, I always could just place each of the desired M9Ks, since there's only 126 of them; I was just trying to avoid that and give the tool as much leeway as possible. Any other thoughts? Thanks again.