vyges-hold-fix

Post-route hold-fix ECO: a gate-level netlist in, a hold-fixed netlist out — delay cells inserted on the data paths that reach their capture flops too early, scored by a real static-timing engine so setup is never sacrificed to fix hold.

Vyges open EDA tools. The hold counterpart to the "close-timing" engines vyges-resize (drive strength), vyges-vt-swap (threshold voltage), and vyges-buffer-insert (transition/fanout). Those all fix the late / setup corner. Hold violations are the opposite problem — data arrives at a capture flop too early on the min-delay path — and open place-and-route flows often leave a residue of them after detailed routing. vyges-hold-fix adds delay: it inserts a delay cell in series on the net feeding each hold-violating capture pin, lifting that pin's earliest arrival until its hold constraint is met.

What it does

Given a netlist + Liberty (+ optional SPEF) and a clock, it runs the shared vyges-sta-si timer to find every hold-violating capture endpoint, then, round by round:

1. rank the endpoints whose hold slack is below -hold_margin;
2. insert one delay cell in series on the net feeding each — the pin is re-driven by a fresh buffer whose input is the pin's original net, adding one cell's min-path delay;
3. rebuild the timer and keep the ECO iff worst hold improved and setup stays met;
4. repeat — a still-violating endpoint simply gets another delay next round, so a delay chain grows only where hold is still negative.

A slow clock usually leaves ample setup slack, so trading a little of it for hold closure is safe; the accept test refuses any move that would push setup negative.

Install

# via the Vyges installer (whole Loom suite)
vyges install loom
# or build from source
cargo build --release   # -> target/release/vyges-hold-fix

CLI

vyges-hold-fix run   JOB  [-o OUT] [--json] [--fail-on-violation]   hold-fix -> delayed netlist
vyges-hold-fix check JOB                                            validate the job
vyges-hold-fix demo                                                 hold-fix a built-in example (no files)

flags:
  -o FILE              write the hold-fixed netlist to FILE (default: stdout)
  --json               emit the before/after report as JSON
  --fail-on-violation  exit 3 if the result still has negative hold slack (CI gate)
  -q, --quiet          suppress non-essential output
  -v, --verbose        extra detail on stderr
  -h, --help           show this help
  -V, --version        show version

Exit codes: 0 ok · 1 runtime error · 2 usage/validation · 3 still-violating (with --fail-on-violation).

The job file (.holdfix)

A .holdfix file is a superset of a vyges-sta-si .sta job — the same timing setup keys (read by the shared timer) plus the hold-fix knobs:

# --- timing setup (same as a .sta job) ---
design:      soc_top
netlist:     soc_top.pnl.v
lib:         sky130_fd_sc_hd__tt_025C_1v80.lib, macro_a.lib, macro_b.lib   # comma-separated
spef:        soc_top.nom.spef                     # optional parasitics
sdc:         soc_top.sdc                          # supplies the clock(s)
# (or an explicit `clock: <port> <period>` instead of an sdc)

# --- hold-fix knobs ---
buffer:      sky130_fd_sc_hd__clkdlybuf4s15_1   # the delay cell to insert (1 input, 1 output)
hold_margin: 0.02                               # fix endpoints with hold slack below -margin (ns)
rounds:      high                               # low(10) | medium(40) | high(200)  max ECO rounds
dont_touch:  clk_* *scan*                       # capture-instance globs left alone

Example

cd examples
vyges-hold-fix run two_flop.holdfix -o two_flop.fixed.v
#   vyges-hold-fix — hold-fix ECO
#     hold:    WHS -0.2000 -> 0.1013 ns [MET]  (margin 0.0000)
#     setup:   WNS 4.9787 -> 4.9787 ns [MET]
#     delays:  4 inserted

The report prints before → after worst hold slack (WHS) and worst setup slack (WNS), plus the delay cells inserted and the capture pin each one delays. --json emits the same as a machine-readable record for CI.

Notes

• Post-route ECO: with spef: present the timer uses extracted interconnect, so the fix is scored against real routed delays. Without SPEF it runs on ideal interconnect (pre-route).
• Because it changes netlist topology, each round is scored by rebuilding the timer on the mutated netlist (incremental topology update is future work).
• Emits structural Verilog that round-trips through the vyges-sta-si / vyges-loom reader, including Verilog escaped identifiers (\clkbuf_0_gpio_in[0]).

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