FPART: a multi-way FPGA partitioning procedure based on the improved FM algorithm

In this paper, a multi-way FPGA partitioning procedure FPART is introduced. The objective function of this procedure is to reduce the number of FPGA devices and the IOB utilization. An improved min-span FM bi-partitioning algorithm on the basis of an advanced gain model is adopted as the fundamental method, and three modules: init-part, optimize, and merge are combined in FPART to approach better results. After initial partitioning, the procedure optimizes the subsets to reduce the total span of cutset and then merges some subsets by removing the cells in them. Experimental results with MCNC'93 benchmarks show that FPART is fast and efficient.