Studies of Timing Structural Properties for Early Evaluation of Circuit Design

The Rent parameter has been widely used to characterize interconnect complexity of designs. The Rent power-law relationship is often used for a priori wire estimation, which is an enabling component of timing closure methodologies. However, the Rent parameter does not explicitly address timing information. In this paper, we propose studies of circuit timing structure that can potentially help identify useful characterizations of the timing behavior of the design. We believe that such characterizations can allow us early identification of designs for which timing closure will prove difficult. One characterization of the timing structure is analogous to the Rent parameter: we propose a temporal Rent characterization based on analyze of the number of active signals intersecting a specified timing boundary within the clock period.