A system and method to perform physical synthesis to transition a logic design to a physical layout of an integrated circuit include obtaining an initial netlist that indicates all components of the integrated circuit including memory elements and edges that interconnect the components. The method also includes generating a graph with at least one of the memory elements and the edges carrying one or more signals to the at least one of the memory elements or from the at least one of the memory elements. The components other than memory elements are not indicated individually on the graph. The netlist is updated based on the graph.