Netlist, Netlist

In this context, a "netlist" describes the connectivity of an electronic design.

There may or may not be any special attributes associated with the nets in a design, depending on the particular language the netlist is written in, and that language's features.

Usually they are kept separate from the netlist, because several such alternate sets of data could be applied to a single netlist. These data may have been extracted from a physical design, and might provide extra information for more accurate simulations. Usually the data are composed of a hierarchical path and a piece of data for that primitive.

Suppose a definition of a capacitor has an associated attribute called "Capacitance" with a default value of "100 pF" (100 picofarads). Each instance of this capacitor might also have such an attribute, only with a different value of capacitance. And other instances might not associate any capacitance at all. In the case where no capacitance is specified for an instance, the instance will "inherit" the 100 pF value from its definition. A value specified will "override" the value on the definition. If a great number of attributes end up being the same as on the definition, a great amount of information can be "inherited", and not have to be redundantly specified in the netlist, saving space, and making the design easier to read by both machines and people.

Source: Wikipedia > Netlist