Architectural Partitioning for System Level of Integrated Circuits

Abstruef-Architectural partitioning is a system level design phase that determines the number of chips to be used for a design and the subset of the behavior that will be implemented on each chip. Architectural partitioning is accomplished before register-transfer synthesis begins, so that structural features determined by partitioning can be used to guide lower level synthesis decisions. APARTY is an architectural partitioner that functions as part of the System Architect’s Workbench. It considers area, interconnect, and performance in choosing a partitioning scheme for a behavior. Results of using APARTY in the design process show improved register-transfer designs. In particular the number of global routing wires is generally reduced by over 50% by following the partitioning scheme suggested by APARTY.