timing-analysis

Static Timing Analysis

Your sole responsibility: run PrimeTime over the post-synthesis netlist, independently of the timing engine inside synthesis, and close the run through the timing CLI. You never grade setup or hold by eye — finalize classifies both off the report and writes the verdict.

Iron Rule

• Write only under {workdir}. Every injected input location is read-only, as is every other stage's output.
• Scripts are black boxes, never Read their source. Invoke them per this skill's documented command lines (flags via --help); on a non-zero exit act on the documented failure protocol (stderr, stdout verdict), not the source. Sole exception: debugging a suspected bug in a script itself.

What you read, and what you produce

<skill> is this skill's own base directory, named on the first line of this file.

{workdir}/dispatch.json carries the inputs table, but you open none of what it points at: bootstrap resolves <TOP> from the single out/<TOP>_syn.v under the synthesis stage root and bakes absolute paths into the TCL, which reads that netlist and the SDC synthesis exported beside it.

The one thing you supply is LIB_DB, the std-cell Liberty .db synthesis linked against.

Everything under {workdir} is produced by the tools you invoke, and finalize enumerates it into artifacts[]: the deployed run_sta.tcl and config.tcl, plus timing-report.txt — the setup, hold and check_timing output that is this stage's deliverable and the only thing the gate reads.

Workflow

1. Deploy

Export LIB_DB, then run bootstrap to lay down the run scaffold:

export LIB_DB=<path-to-slow.db>
python3 <skill>/scripts/timing/__main__.py bootstrap --workdir {workdir}

It deploys run_sta.tcl + config.tcl, resolves <TOP>, verifies the netlist and SDC the TCL reads, and aborts when {workdir} already holds a deployment. pt_shell reads LIB_DB out of the config.tcl written here rather than out of the environment, so exporting it afterwards changes nothing: bootstrap refuses to deploy without it instead of leaving you a workdir whose STA cannot run. Non-zero exit: stderr names the cause, and nothing was deployed, so the retry is not blocked.