Patent ID: 8255199

Claim:
A method for characterizing performance, over a simulation duration, of an electronic circuit having one or more cells, the method comprising: (a) executing a first computer-based simulation of the performance of the electronic circuit over the simulation duration to characterize values of a cell parameter for at least one cell; (b) executing multiple computer-based simulations of the performance of at least one cell, each of the multiple simulations simulating the performance of the at least one cell at a specific point in time within the simulation duration, based on a value of the cell parameter corresponding to the specific point in time; and (c) generating one or more metrics characterizing the performance of the electronic circuit based on results from the multiple simulations, wherein: the electronic circuit comprises a clock path p, defined as a sequence of one or more intermediate cells m connecting a clock source cell to a clock leaf cell, the total number of intermediate cells denoted m p ; the first simulation characterizes values of the cell parameter for at least one intermediate cell in the clock path over the simulation duration; for the at least one intermediate cell in the clock path, each of the multiple simulations comprises simulating the performance of the at least one intermediate cell at a specific point in time within the simulation duration, based on the at least one intermediate cell utilizing the cell parameter value corresponding to the specific point in time; and step (c) comprises generating the one or more metrics based on the results of the multiple simulations of the at least one intermediate cell.