Performance-driven multi-FPGA partitioning using functional clustering and replication

This paper presents a new performance-driven partitioning method for multi-FPGA designs. The proposed method consists of three steps: (1) functional-cluster formation, (2) slack computation, and (3) set-covering based partitioning with functional replication. The proposed method performs multi-FPGA partitioning by taking into account path delays and design structural information. We introduce a functional replication technique which performs circuit replications at the functional cluster level instead of the cell level for delay and interconnect minimization. Experimental results on a number of benchmarks and industrial designs demonstrate that the proposed method achieves high-performance and high-density multi-FPGA partitions.