Updating hierarchical DAG representations through a bottom up method

摘要

A process and implementing computer system (13) for updating circuit representations in a hierarchical Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) format (400-410) based upon changes made to the primitive components of the circuit in a flat representation (201-213) includes performing a depth first search (505) on the hierarchical representation of the circuit beginning at the root level (501) for a given path. At each lower level, each child instance is visited (505) and if there is any change in any attribute between the hierarchical and flat representations (509), the component in the hierarchical representation which needs to be changed is copied (807) and connected to the children components of the original hierarchical representation. Changes in the attributes of the children components are made in the copied component (809). If the new component already exists in the hierarchy 811, then that component is deleted (817), otherwise the copied component is returned (813), and changes are passed upwardly to the root level (815) where the previous DAG may be replaced with the copied and updated DAG which includes changes in the attributes of components of a corresponding flat circuit representation.