A system and method for simulating a digital circuit uses scheduling information for Term Rewriting System (TRS) rules to limit the computation of simulation values to only those value used by the rules scheduled to execute on the current state of the system. Typically only a small subset of TRS rules are scheduled to execute on any given state, thus only values related to this subset are computed. Such a determination may be made by leveraging the logical separation of rule activations and rule actions in a TRS system, such that only rule activation information need be examined.