On the Generation of System Partitions for Large-Scale Integration

The problem of partitioning an electronic system into subsystems to be implemented with large-scale integration is considered. The system is composed of interacting functional blocks; the partitioning objective is the minimization of a figure of merit which takes into account the number of different types of subsystems and the number of interconnections between subsystems. An explicit formula is given for the figure of merit, and the partitioning criteria and constraints are illustrated. Based on these criteria, a computer-oriented algorithm is proposed which satisfies the constraints and leads to a quasi-minimum figure of merit.