Patent ID: 7359843

Claim:
A computer implemented method of determining aggressor-induced delay change in a victim net of a stage of an integrated circuit design, the stage including a victim net driver gate, a receiver gate and an interconnect network including a victim net and an aggressor net, comprising: providing an input and output voltage dependent current model of the victim net driver gate; producing a model of a load presented to an output of the driver gate by the interconnect network; producing a model of the interconnect network of the stage, which can be used to propagate a waveform from an output of the driver gate to an input of the receiver gate; simulating behavior of the victim net during nominal (noiseless) transition by performing steps including, providing a signal transition at an input of the driver gate; using the current model of the driver gate and the load model of the interconnect network to produce a nominal driver gate output waveform resulting from the provided input signal transition; and using the interconnect model to propagate the nominal driver gate output waveform from the driver gate output to the receiver gate input; simulating behavior of the victim net during noisy transition by performing steps including, providing a signal transition at an input of the driver gate; providing an aggressor-induced current waveform to an output of the driver gate; using the current model of the driver gate and the load model of the interconnect network to produce a noisy driver gate output waveform resulting from the provided input signal transition and the aggressor-induced current waveform; and using the interconnect model to propagate the noisy driver gate output waveform from the driver gate output to the receiver gate input; providing an aggressor-induced voltage waveform to an input of the receiver gate; producing a value representing a difference between delay associated with the simulated noiseless transition and delay associated with the simulated noisy transition; and saving the produced value in computer readable memory.