A new approach using symbolic analysis to compute path-dependent effective properties preserving hierarchy

This paper describes a technique to calculate an effective property of intentional devices, like resistors, preserving design hierarchy. Traditional methods of computing effective properties like point-to-point resistance, involved using a flat netlist and solving a conductance matrix or flattening a hierarchical netlist and applying reduction techniques to reduce parallel and series resistors. These traditional techniques are not conducive to computing effective resistances on partial paths in hierarchical designs and then using those values to do other rule checks. This is because flattening a netlist of millions of devices to compute a partial path property is very expensive in memory. This paper focuses on an algorithm to efficiently compute effective path-dependent properties on intentional devices in a netlist.