Patent ID: 7512919

Claim:
A system for incremental statistical timing analysis of an electrical circuit comprising: a. a results input for receiving one or more results of a first statistical timing analysis where the first statistical timing analysis propagates timing values as a weighted sum of probability distributions of one or more of sources of variation; b. a change input for receiving one or more incremental changes to the electrical circuit; c. a query input for receiving one or more statistical timing queries that request updated statistical timing information about the electrical circuit where the query is one or more of: a statistical arrival time at a node, a statistical required arrival time at a node, a statistical slack at a node, a statistical slew at a node, an arrival tightness probability of an edge, a required arrival tightness probability of an edge, a criticality probability of an edge, a criticality probability of a node, and a probability of a timing test being met; and d. an incremental statistical timing process that provides the one or more answers to the respective queries as an output of the system, the incremental statistical timing process including a timing graph representing timing features of the electrical circuit, the timing graph including a recomputation portion corresponding to the one or more incremental changes to the electrical circuit, the recomputation portion including an intersection between a fanin cone and a fanout cone corresponding to each incremenental change where the recomputation portion is determined through forward and backward propagation timing analyses to limit a number of recomputations needed to answer queries, the one or more answers being the requested statistical timing information for the electrical circuit with the incremental changes.