Patent Document ID: 6110217
Application ID: 08943509
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A multitasking system for simulation of the behavior of an electronic circuit, the system comprising: means for partitioning the electronic circuit to be simulated into portions; an interface module having a standard interface for coupling with active components and for controlling communication between different ones of the active components, the communication being performed using block waveform relaxation; and a plurality of active components coupled to the interface module, each of the active components including a simulator module having (i) means for performing a simulation of a respective one of the portions of the circuit to be simulated, and (ii) means for communicating inter-process status, including retro-events generated by another simulator module of the plurality of active components, between the simulator modules by block wave form relaxation, each of the means for performing a simulation comprising either a backtracking simulator or a non-backtracking simulator, wherein the interface module prohibiting a non-backtracking simulator from running beyond an earliest time that a retro-event can occur.