The system design problem is NP-complete

System design is the process used to transfer the need for a system into an actual production unit. It requires selecting components from a given set and matching the interfaces between them. Those that can be connected to meet the top level system´s input and output requirements are tested to see how well they meet the system´s performance and cost goals. We prove that this system design process is NP-complete. This is done by restricting the Knapsack problem, which is known to be NP-complete, to an instance of the system design process problem. The implications of this are that designing optimal systems with deterministic, polynomial time procedures is not possible. However, designing near optimal systems is possible and even likely