Importance

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Abstract

A PLA programming system includes software routines for automatically partitioning a specified set of PLA product terms into independent partitions. Each PLA product term specifies values for a set of binary input signals, and values for a set of binary output signals. Some of the output signals are feedback signals also used as input signals. A partitioning merit value is generated for each feedback signal, and then one or more of the feedback signals are selected as target bits in accordance with the generated merit values. Then the specified set of PLA product terms are divided into partitions in accordance with the values of the input signals corresponding to the target bits. All of the PLA product terms in each partition of PLA product terms have identical input signal values corresponding to the target bits, and PLA product terms in different ones of the partitions have different input signal values corresponding to the target bits. When the partitioning process fails to generate partitions containing no more than a predefined number of PLA product terms, an extra feedback signal is added to the input and output signal list of every PLA product term. The extra input and output signals are assigned binary values such that the added feedback signal will be a good target bit for partitioning the PLA product terms, and then process of selecting target bits and partitioning the PLA product terms is repeated.

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First Claim