System and method for electronic circuit simulation

Abstract

A system and method transforms a model of electronic circuit to improve simulation speed and/or reduce emulation area. The model may include storage elements; one or more of these storage elements may be represented by dense memory, and the storage elements may be represented by references thereto.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A computer-implemented method for simulating operation of an electronic circuit, the method comprising:
 receiving first data representing a hardware-description language (HDL) description of an electronic circuit;   identifying, using the first data, a first description of a first storage element configured to process, during a first time period, an input signal to store data associated with the input signal and to output, during a second time period, an output signal representing the data;   determining a computer-memory structure configured to store the data;   determining a second description of a second storage element configured to store a reference value indicating a location of the data in the computer-memory structure, a topology of the second storage element corresponding to a topology of the first storage element;   determining, using the first data and the second description, a software-simulation model corresponding to the HDL description and the second storage element;   storing, using a first portion of the software-simulation model corresponding to the second storage element, the reference value; and   processing, by the computer-memory structure during the second time period, the reference value to output the data.