A static timing analysis system for finding timing violations in a digital circuit design prior to circuit fabrication, and associated methods, use infinite-depth path-based analysis (IPBA) to achieve reduced pessimism as opposed to systems or methods employing only graph-based analysis (GBA), but with greatly reduced compute time requirements, or greater logic path coverage, versus systems or methods employing conventional or exhaustive path-based analysis. IPBA achieves the improved coverage or compute time results by slotting nodes of a circuit design graph into stages, propagating phases stage-by-stage for all paths in parallel, and merging phases wherever possible during the analysis.