A system and methods are disclosed for inferring higher level descriptions of circuit connectivity from register transfer level (RTL) netlists in order to provide more understandable and manageable design descriptions for complex System-on-Chip (SOC) designs. In particular, rule-based interface matching is automatically performed by analyzing actual port names on instances of functional elements and blocks to form signal groupings that comprise a higher-level abstracted description. An example syntax is provided for defining rules that are used to define how various analysis are performed. Data describing standard interfaces on common Intellectual Property (IP) blocks is optionally made available to facilitate interface matching. Also, a facility is included to allow user-guided mapping on instantiated interfaces with respect to actual port names in an RTL-level design.