For incremental circuit analysis using extracted hierarchy

The authors present an algorithm for extracting a two-level subnetwork hierarchy from flat netlists and its application to incremental circuit analysis in the COSMOS compiled switch-level simulator. Incremental operation is achieved by using the file system as a large hash table that retains information over many executions of the incremental analyzer. The hierarchy extraction algorithm computes a hash signature for each subnetwork by coloring vertices in a manner similar to wirelist-comparison programs, then identifies duplicates using standard hash-table techniques. Its application decreases the network preprocessing time for COSMOS by nearly an order of magnitude.<>