Performance Analysis Based on Timing Simulation

Determining the cycle time and a critical cycle is a fundamental problem in the analysis of concurrent systems. We solve this problemusing timing simulation of an underlying Signal Graph (an extension of Marked Graphs). For a Signal Graph with n vertices and m arcs our algorithm has the polynomial time complexity O(b/sup 2/m), where b is the number of vertices with initially marked in-arcs (typically b≪n). The algorithm has a clear semantic and a low descriptive complexity. We illustrate the use of the algorithm by applying it to performance analysis of asynchronous circuits.