Balanced subdivision of circuits for hardware emulation assisted simulation

A method comprising performing the following operations by one or more processors of a computer system:

• dividing a circuit design into partitions that are substantially uniform in size;
• identifying sequential dependencies based on signals that cross partitions;
• determining a set of primary signals that, when provided as input to a simulation of the circuit design, break the sequential dependencies such that each partition can be simulated independently, wherein the set of primary signals comprises a subset of the signals that cross partitions;
• configuring a hardware emulation system to capture values of the set of primary signals during emulation of the circuit design;
• and
• performing the simulation using the captured values, wherein the simulation comprises reconstructing signals not included in the set of primary signals using values obtained from simulating each partition independently.

A computer system comprising:

• memory storing electronic design automation (EDA) software, wherein the EDA software comprises a simulation program configured to perform a simulation of a circuit design;
• and
• one or more processors communicatively coupled to a hardware emulation system, wherein the one or more processors are configured to execute program instructions of the EDA software, the program instructions causing the one or more processors to:
• divide the circuit design into partitions that are substantially uniform in size;
• identify sequential dependencies based on signals that cross partitions;
• determine a set of primary signals that, when provided as input to the simulation, break the sequential dependencies such that each partition can be simulated independently, wherein the set of primary signals comprises a subset of the signals that cross partitions;
• configure the hardware emulation system to capture values of the set of primary signals during emulation of the circuit design;
• and
• perform the simulation using the captured values, wherein the simulation comprises reconstructing signals not included in the set of primary signals using values obtained from simulating each partition independently.