Partial functional hierarchy tree is a partial tree divided according to a 
series of data flow between functions. (problem division) 

Partial functional hierarchy tree of given problem is a key in case retrieval. 

Cases(Circuit blocks) have their own functional hierarchy tree as index. 


Flexible case retrieval mechanism 

Case Retrieval with SME 

SME can extract structurally similar cases to the given problem, if 
higher relations in given structures are same between the case and the 
problem, even if the lower relations and entities are not same. 

SME evaluates the simirarity between functional hierarchy trees and 
retrieves circuits which have most similar functions as a whole even 
though the details are different. (Fig.2) 


Fig.2 Example of Case Retrieval with SME

Fig.3 Speedup by Pallalel Retrieval



Parallel Case Retrieval 

Cases are retrieved in parallel by distributing the problem and the 
cases to each processors in good balance. 

Speedup of about 20-fold is attained using 64 processors in the case 
of 22 partial functional hierarchy trees and 180 cases.(Fig.3) 




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