TIME BUDGETING DURING INTEGRATED CIRCUIT DESIGN

Two time budgeting techniques are provided that are suitable for early and late integrated circuit design phases, respectively. During the early design phase, both the positive and negative slack paths are time budgeted, such that a positive slack path cannot become a negative slack path after budget generation. If all the budget constraints are met by resynthesis for all circuit modules, then the technique guarantees that the final design, when assembled, meets all time constraints. During the late design phase, convergence is guaranteed. Further, synthesis runs for sub-modules focus initially on the worst critical path.