Installing ModelSim on Ubuntu

modelsim_installation.md

ModelSim Installation on Ubuntu

Installation requirements

The free version of Modelsim is a 32-bit binary and therefore requires certain 32-bit libraries in order to work correctly. For Ubunutu, install the following packages

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libc6:i386 libncurses5:i386 libstdc++6:i386 lib32ncurses6 libxft2 libxft2:i386 libxext6 libxext6:i386 

Installation

Download the ModelSim - Intel FPGA edition installer (both packages) from the Intel homepage.

Make the installer executable

chmod +x ModelSimSetup-20.1.1.720-linux.run

Run the installer and install ModelSim:

./ModelSimSetup-20.1.1.720-linux.run

We assume ModelSim to be installed to /opt. If this is the case, the binaries are in /opt/modelsim_ase/bin/. In order to work with these tools, you need to add this folder to the path variable. Therefore, add the following line to your terminal configuration file, e.g., .bashrc or .zshrc.

export PATH=$PATH:/opt/modelsim_ase/bin

After installing there might be problems on HiDPI displays as it looks like ModelSim does not scale fractionally, at all. I use 150% scaling on Xorg on Ubuntu 24.04LTS.

I figured out a work-around for now using Weston, a compositor that allows you to create a new desktop window with another scale:

1. Install Weston:
   sudo apt install weston
2. Launch a new Weston window at an integer scale (200% in this case):
   weston --xwayland --scale=2
3. In the top left you can press a terminal icon to open a terminal inside the new window. From that terminal, open ModelSim.

This workaround is however not very good, but it's the only one I could get to work on Ubuntu 24.04LTS. Xpra and run_scaled are just completely broken for me and other scaling methods seemed to just do nothing. So if anyone else finds a better solution, please let me know. The current workaround works, but it's cumbersome, so a better method would be much appreciated.