TRACE lists the paths per timing preference starting from the worst case path going down. Let's say you want to look at a path that maybe the 1001st worst case path in the design. You do not want to list 1001 paths in the trace report. How can this easily be done?

Using a MULTICYCLE preference with the clock multiplier set to 1x you can single out a specific transfer. Here is an example.

MULTICYCLE FROM CELL "myffs1*" TO CELL "myffs2*" 1X;

The above preference will report on the transfers from cell myffs1* to cell myffs2* where a wildcard ("*") is used to match all instances that start with "myffs1" or "myffs2". This is very useful for when a bus is analyzed. The reporting of this transfer under a MULTICYCLE 1x is the exactly same as a FREQUENCY preference. This can also be done to analyze specific clock domain crosses. Here is another example.

MULTICYCLE FROM CLKNET "clk1" TO CLKNET "clk2" 1X;

This preference will report on all of the clock domain transfers from clk1 to clk2. Usually a clock domain transfer is covered under the FREQUENCY preference for the destination clock domain. Using this preference however, you can single out a transfer to its own report section. You will see the number of paths under the FREQUENCY preference drop since those paths are now covered under the MULTICYCLE preference.

There is one exception when you will not see the number drop and that is when the number of paths is greater than 4096. TRACE can only report up to 4096 paths, so if the number is over 4096 then you will not notice a drop in the paths since trace just pulled in the remaining paths to get to 4096.