As the levels of logic increase, the number of paths can increase by an amazing amount. This is not always the case, but if paths go from several components to several components and have several levels of logic between them, then these numbers grow very quickly.
Numbers so large that they wrap around the timing report several times have been seen, and after checking several of the paths we were able to conclude that TRCE is performing the correct analysis. While we are unable to go in and check every path, because of the high number of paths, we are able to reproduce small scale designs that have a relatively small path count and are able to prove that the analysis is correct.