so I am currently writing my master's thesis, where I developed a new method on how to develop a "new" type of digital circuit. I am currently done with the implementation and getting the results, and am starting to write the actual thesis. So while writing, I did a literature search to re-find some of the papers that I used to for the development of the "new" method. While doing this, I came across a paper which uses approximately the same method. So my question is if this makes much of my work obsolete? I am worried that this means that I no longer present anything extremely "new" to the table anymore. Additionally, I know I now have to cite this paper, however I don't know where to that. I can for instance pretend that I used that paper as inspiration and say that I'm just re-implementing the method in a new setting. Or I can state later in my thesis that "oh by the way, someone else has also done this already."
For some context, the paper that I found uses the method to re-develop a whole digital circuit, while I am only doing it on a part of the circuit, so that I can save more power. So we are utilizing the method differently, and my version is more adapted to fit this specific type of circuit. Additionally, the paper mainly uses the method on smaller circuits and have not described how to do it on bigger ones, while I do describe how to expand it to work for bigger circuits. So there are some differences.
