Method for simulating an electrical circuit, computer program product, software application, and data carrier

A method of simulating an electrical circuit that can be described by a layout with a multiplicity of cells having the following features:

• the cells have one or more networks described by geometrical data and subdivided into one or more models of electrical circuit elements;
• the cells have information about those layers on which the networks are present;
• the cells have references to further cells;
• and the method which comprises the following steps:
• a) extracting node information from a layout;
• b) determining and recording coupling capacitance values of the networks with isolated consideration of the cells;
• c) determining and recording environment-dependent coupling capacitance values of the networks for all of the cell entities;
• d) determining and recording intrinsic capacitance values of the networks for each cell;
• e) determining and recording intrinsic capacitance values of the networks for all of the cell entities;
• f) calculating a respective comparison capacitance value for each network with isolated consideration of the cells;
• g) calculating differential capacitance values of each network with respect to a respective comparison capacitance value for all of the cell entities;
• h) classifying the cell entities of each cell into different variants for all of the networks by using the differential capacitance values as a basis;
• and
• i) simulating a behavior of the electrical circuit using the variants of the cell entities determined in the preceding step.