An example method performed for a circuit path includes: receiving signals in the circuit path; and controlling states of the signals in the circuit path based on skews produced by circuits electrically connected in series in the circuit path. The states are controlled by inverting or not inverting the signals in the circuit path so that skews produced by different circuits in the circuit paths at least partially cancel.

An integrated circuit simulation method is performed by a processor and includes: obtaining a register transfer level (RTL) waveform set obtained by performing an RTL simulation based on a circuit, where the circuit is generated in an RTL design stage and includes a register having an internal net and a data output port, and the RTL waveform set includes a first waveform corresponding to the data output port of the register; obtaining a netlist and delay information obtained by performing a logic synthesis based on the circuit, where the netlist includes a first node and a second node, the first node corresponds to the internal net of the register, and the second node corresponds to the data output port of the register; applying the first waveform to the first node; and triggering the register according to the delay information to obtain a second waveform at the second node.

Methods and systems for performing post clock tree synthesis (CTS) of a clock tree include accessing, from memory, an integrated circuit design comprising a clock tree interconnecting a clock source to a plurality of clock sinks. Each clock sink has an associated current insertion delay. A mean insertion delay of the plurality of clock sinks is determined based on the associated current insertion delays of the clock sinks. A target insertion delay for the clock sinks is set based on the mean insertion delay and a target insertion delay adjustment determined for each individual clock sink. One or more clock sinks are identified that have a target insertion delay adjustment exceeding a skew threshold value. The clock tree is modified to reduce the target insertion delay adjustment, for each identified clock sink of the one or more clock sinks, to less than or equal to the skew threshold value.

Circuit design simulation and clock event reduction may include detecting, using computer hardware, a plurality of models of a circuit design driven by a clock source by parsing the circuit design. The circuit design is a mixed language circuit design including a hardware description language (HDL) model and a high-level programming language (HLPL) model. Using the computer hardware, a clock requirement for the HLPL model for a simulation of the circuit design may be determined. The clock requirement of the HLPL model differs from a clock requirement of the HDL model. Using the computer hardware, an interface of the HLPL model may be modified based on the clock requirement of the HLPL model.

A graph-based timing analysis (GBA) is applied to a circuit design that includes a routed gate-level netlist to produce timing estimates of the circuit design. A machine learning (ML) model is applied to modify these GBA timing estimates of the circuit design to make them more accurate. For example, the ML model may be trained using timing estimates from path-based timing analysis as the ground truth, and using features of the circuit design from the GBA as input to the ML model.

A system and method for changing a circuit design are described. The method includes generating a propagation graph for the circuit design and estimating slack values for some of the paths in the propagation graph. The method also includes making a virtual change to the circuit design and determining whether to accept or reject the change based on how the change affects the estimated slack values.

A system receives a logic design of a circuit of an integrated circuit and apply a reduced synthesis process to the logical design of the integrated circuit. The reduced synthesis process is less computation intensive compared to the optimized digital implementation synthesis process and generates a netlist having suboptimal delay. The system provides the generated netlist as input to a timing analysis that alters the standard delay computation (through scaling and other means) to predict the timing of a fully optimized netlist. The reduced synthesis process has faster execution time compared to the optimized digital implementation synthesis process but results in comparable performance, power and area that is within a threshold of the results generated using optimized digital implementation synthesis process.

A method, programming product, and/or system is disclosed for identifying flaws in integrated circuits, e.g., processors, that includes: selecting from a list of a plurality of timing issues in an integrated circuit, where each timing issue on the list is represented by one or more VHDL code lines, a particular timing issue to investigate; tracing back the selected one or more VHDL code lines, corresponding to the selected particular timing issue to investigate, to one or more selected physical design VHDL (PD-VHDL) code lines; logically navigating across the one or more selected PD-VHDL code lines to one or more corresponding normalized VHDL (NVDHL) code lines; and tracing back the one or more corresponding NHVDL code lines to one or more short-hand VHDL (SVHDL) code lines to identify one or more code lines, written by a code designer, responsible for the particular timing issue being investigated.

Embodiments for providing enhanced location-aware protection of latches in a computing environment are provided. One or more latches are combined in one or more of a plurality of bounding boxes on a two-dimensional circuit design layout based on one or more rules. A location-aware interleaving of error correction codes (ECC) and burst error correction codes may be selectively applied to one or more latches in those of the plurality of bounding boxes, where multiple bit errors are corrected.

An integrated circuit layout is provided. The integrated circuit layout includes one or more first cell rows partially extending across a space arranged for an integrated circuit layout along a first direction. Each of the one or more first cell rows has a first height along a second direction perpendicular to the first direction. The integrated circuit layout includes one or more third cell rows partially extending across the space along the first direction. Each of the one or more third cell rows has a second height along the second direction, the second height different from the first height.