The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 08, 1998
Filed:
Jul. 05, 1995
Darrell R Parham, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Sun Microsystems, Inc., Mountain View, CA (US);
Abstract
The present invention teaches a variety of methods, data structures and apparatus for use in representing and traversing hierarchical netlists. According to a first embodiment of the present invention, a hierarchical netlist which represents an electronic device is stored in a computer readable medium and includes a module data structure and a hierarchical data structure. The module data structure includes a first module and a list identifying each instance of the first module present in the hierarchical netlist. The hierarchical point data structure represents a first hierarchical element in the hierarchical netlist and is arranged to identify a selected device element represented in the first module. Additionally, the hierarchical point data structure is capable of identifying a plurality of unique occurrences of separate but identical device elements that are represented by the first hierarchical element. Thus, if the selected device element has separate but identical occurrences in the electrical device which are interconnected appropriately therein, the hierarchical point data structure may be used to identify these separate but identical occurrences. In accordance with other aspects of the present invention, a variety of methods which utilize hierarchical data structures to initialize and traverse the hierarchical netlist are taught.