Symbolic Timing Analysis of Digital Circuits Using Analytic Delay Functions

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Main Authors: Thaqi, Era, Eigner, Dennis, Ferdowsi, Arman, Schmid, Ulrich
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Thaqi, Era
Eigner, Dennis
Ferdowsi, Arman
Schmid, Ulrich
author_facet Thaqi, Era
Eigner, Dennis
Ferdowsi, Arman
Schmid, Ulrich
contents We propose a novel approach to symbolic timing analysis for digital integrated circuits based on recently developed analytic delay formulas for 2-input NOR, NAND, and Muller-C gates by Ferdowsi et al. (NAHS 2025). Given a fixed order of the transitions of all input and internal signals of a circuit, our framework computes closed-form analytic delay expressions for all the internal signal transition times that depend on (i) the symbolic transition times of the relevant input signals and (ii) the model parameters of the relevant gates. The resulting formulas facilitate per-transition timing analysis without any simulation, by instantiating the symbolic input transition times and the gate parameters. More importantly, however, they also enable an \emph{analytic} study of the dependencies of certain timing properties on input signals and gate parameters. For instance, differentiating a symbolic delay expression with respect to a gate parameter or input transition time enables sensitivity analysis. As a proof of concept, we implement our approach using the computer algebra system SageMath and apply it to the NOR-gate version of the c17 slack benchmark circuit.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_15907
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Symbolic Timing Analysis of Digital Circuits Using Analytic Delay Functions
Thaqi, Era
Eigner, Dennis
Ferdowsi, Arman
Schmid, Ulrich
Hardware Architecture
We propose a novel approach to symbolic timing analysis for digital integrated circuits based on recently developed analytic delay formulas for 2-input NOR, NAND, and Muller-C gates by Ferdowsi et al. (NAHS 2025). Given a fixed order of the transitions of all input and internal signals of a circuit, our framework computes closed-form analytic delay expressions for all the internal signal transition times that depend on (i) the symbolic transition times of the relevant input signals and (ii) the model parameters of the relevant gates. The resulting formulas facilitate per-transition timing analysis without any simulation, by instantiating the symbolic input transition times and the gate parameters. More importantly, however, they also enable an \emph{analytic} study of the dependencies of certain timing properties on input signals and gate parameters. For instance, differentiating a symbolic delay expression with respect to a gate parameter or input transition time enables sensitivity analysis. As a proof of concept, we implement our approach using the computer algebra system SageMath and apply it to the NOR-gate version of the c17 slack benchmark circuit.
title Symbolic Timing Analysis of Digital Circuits Using Analytic Delay Functions
topic Hardware Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.15907