Calculate the partitions of N

Pyth, 18 bytes

L?b{SM+R-bsdsyMb]Y

Try it online! (The y at the end is used to call the function)

This is fairly quick.

This uses recursion. If the input is b, my method will generate the partitions from 0 to b-1, and then generate the correct partitions from each.

For example, when b=4:

  • b=0 gives [[]]
  • b=1 gives [[1]]
  • b=2 gives [[2], [1, 1]]
  • b=3 gives [[3], [1, 2], [1, 1, 1]]

Then, to each partition in b=0, append 4 (to make the sum 4); to each partition in b=1, append 3 (to make the sum 4); etc.

This is mainly how it works.

L?b{SM+R-bsdsyMb]Y

L                    define a function called "y" which takes an argument: "b"
 ?b                  test for truthiness of b (in this case, test if b>0).


   {SM+R-bsdsyMb     if truthy:

             yMb         call this function from 0 to b-1.
            s            unpack each list of partitions, generating only partitions.
      +R                 to each partition (d), append:
        -                    the difference of
         b                   b (the argument) and
          sd                 the sum of d (the partition).
    SM                   sort each partition.
   {                     remove duplicates.


                ]Y   if falsey:

                 Y       yield [].
                ]        yield [[]].

Pyth, 10 9 bytes

{SMlMM./U

Not too sure if this isn't cheating, but the rules only said one cannot use integer partition (it's not stated clearly in the question itself, but a comment by OP in the question says integer partition). I'm using string list partition, which makes slices of the list that concatenate up to the "mother" list. I believe I have to thank @Maltysen for the idea of using lists rather than strings.

n=15 takes less than one second on my machine.

In dataflow pseudocode:

              input       // initial data
        U     range       // makes a list of length equal to input
      ./      partition   // partitions string
   lMM        length      // length of each substring in each way to partition
 SM           sort        // sort each way to partition
{             deduplicate // removes all duplicate after sorting
              print       // implicit, output final result

Try it online here.


MATL, 20 bytes

:"0Gq:@XNG3$Yc!dS!Xu

Try it online!

For input 15 it takes about 2 seconds in the online compiler.

Explanation

This works by generating partition points and then converting to partition lengths. What I mean by this is the following. Given input N = 5, a possible partition is [2 2 1]. This is represented by partition points [0 2 4 5], such that consecutive differences (or lengths) of the partition points give the resulting partition of the input number.

All arrays of partition points start with 0 and end with N. The number k of intermediate points varies from 0 to N-1. For N and k given, the intermediate points can be generated as a combination of the numbers [1, 2, ..., N-1] taken k at a time.

Several arrays of partition points may give rise to the same result in a different order. For example, partition points [0 1 3 5] would give the partition lengths [1 2 2], i.e. the same as the previous [2 2 1] only in a different order. This has to be taken into account by sorting each array of partition lengths and removing duplicates.

:        % Implicitly input N. Push [1 2 ... N]. These are the possible values of k,
         % except with N instead of 0
"        % For each
  0      %   Push 0
  Gq:    %   Push [1 ... N-1]. These the possible intermediate points
  @XN    %   Push k and produce the combinations. Each k produces a 2D array with
         %   each combination on a row. The value k=N produces an empty array
  G      %   Push N
  3$Yc   %   Prepend a column of zeros and append a column of N to the array
  !d     %   Transpose. Consecutive differences of each column
  S!     %   Sort each column. Transpose
  Xu     %   Keep only unique rows
         % Implicitly end for and display all arrays in the stack