Logic simulation of circuit designs using on-the-fly bit reduction for constraint solving

Abstract

A system performs logic simulation of a circuit design specified using a hardware description language such as Verilog. The system performs constraint solving based on an expression specified in the specification of the circuit design. The system identifies required bits for each variable in the expression. The number of required bits is less than the number of bits specified in the variable declaration. The system performs bit-level constraint solving by performing a bit operation on the set of required bits and a simplified processing of the remaining bits of the variable. Since the original circuit design is preserved with the original bit-widths for simulation, those required bits are used on the fly internally during constraint solving. Furthermore, dynamic bit reductions on arithmetic operations are performed on the fly. The system improves computational efficiency by restricting bit operations to fewer bits of variables and operators of the expression.