Timing verification of an integrated circuit

Abstract

This disclosure describes a design tool that verifies timing of an integrated circuit design by partitioning the integrated circuit design's gate-level netlist into target cell partition netlists and performs transistor-level circuit simulation on each target cell partition netlist. The design tool performs a back tracing procedure on each target sequential cell to define the target cell partition netlists. The design tool then identifies timing modes that enable valid logical paths through the target cell partition netlists from source sequential cells to the target sequential cells. In turn, the design tool performs transistor-level circuit simulation (e.g., SPICE simulations) on each target cell partition netlist to check for timing violations based upon the timing modes. In one embodiment, the design tool includes clock tree delay information, power supply variations, or routing parasitic information in the simulations to achieve improved timing analysis accuracy compared with traditional static timing analysis or timing optimization.