Method for performing electrical rules checks on digital circuits with mutually exclusive signals

摘要

A method for reducing false electrical rule violations during the analysis of a digital circuit having mutually exclusive signal relationships therein. The use of designer knowledge about signals which are mutually exclusive in the circuit design is employed to determine, based on all relevant mutually exclusive signal relationships in the circuit design under test, all possible permutations of active signals used in the analysis. For each permutation, the analysis is performed using the active signals associated with the permutation while ignoring the effect of all signals that are inactive based on the mutually exclusive signal relationships. The invention may be applied to any digital circuit test wherein the effect of mutually exclusive signal relationships affects the outcome of the analysis.