Patent ID: 7509601

Claim:
A method of analyzing a design of an integrated circuit, the method comprising: defining a logical representation of at least a portion of the integrated circuit, the logical representation comprising a plurality of annotation objects drawn on an annotation layer and associated with respective physical features of the integrated circuit, the plurality of annotation objects being selected from a set of predetermined annotation object types including at least: a wire annotation object defining a logical representation of a wire of the integrated circuit; and a contact annotation object defining a logical representation of a connection between two or more physical features of the integrated circuit; selecting from among the plurality of annotation objects drawn on the annotation layer, a set of annotation objects interconnected by at least contact annotation objects; identifying, from among the selected set of annotation objects, each annotation object which has a respective unambiguous signal value; and propagating the respective unambiguous signal value from each identified annotation object to all other annotation objects in the selected set.