____              _______              
 / __ \___  ___ ___/_  __(_)_ _  ___ ____
/ /_/ / _ \/ -_) _ \/ / / /  ' \/ -_) __/
\____/ .__/\__/_//_/_/ /_/_/_/_/\__/_/      
    /_/ 

CONTENTS OF THIS FILE
---------------------
 * Introduction
 * Building
 * Regression
 * Project tree
 * Maintainers


INTRODUCTION
------------
OpenTimer is an open-source high-performance timing analysis tool developed by Tsung-Wei Huang and
Prof. Martin D. F. Wong in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), IL, USA. Evolving
from its previous generation UI-Timer 1.0 and UI-Timer 2.0, OpenTimer works on industrial formats 
(.v, .spef, .lib, .sdc, .lef, .def), and supports important features such as block-based analysis, 
path-based analysis, cppr, incremental timing, and multi-threading. OpenTimer is extremely fast by 
its elegant data structure and algorithm which can efficiently and accurately analyze large-scale 
designs. Also, its user-friendly APIs enable seamless collaboration with optimization tools and thus 
can greatly speed up the timing closure. Most importantly OpenTimer is open-source!

Visit website for more information about OpenTimer! http://web.engr.illinois.edu/~thuang19


BUILDING
--------
OpenTimer is highly self-contained, with very few dependences on other projects. It is written in
C++ language and mainly works on a linux system with a GCC compiler (better with version 4.4 or 
higher). OpenTimer is built using well-known GNU Autotool (e.g., Autoconf and Automake) in 
open source community. In order to build the OpenTimer, please follow the standard Autotool flow.

 * ~$: ./configure
 * ~$: make
 * ~$: sudo make install (optional)

A successful build produces an executable binary "OpenTimer" in the top folder, as well as a set
of shared libraries in the folder ./lib. 


REGRESSION
----------
Regression goes through the benchmarks released from TAU 2015 contest and perform verification on 
the timing results in comparison to pre-generated golden reference. This is particularly helpful 
for ensuring the code integrity and correctness especially after developments that modify the source 
codes. 

 * ~$: make regression

By default, the accuracy values from the regression should be all 100.


PROJECT TREE
------------
OpenTimer/
 - inc/
 - lib/
 - src/
    - debug/
    - dump/
    - log/
    - sdc/
    - shell/
    - timer/
    - generic/
    - verilog/
    - liberty/
    - iterator/
    - spef/
 - main/
 - test/
 - regression/
 - 3rd-party/
    - LEF/ 
    - DEF/ 
 - golden/
 - example
 - README
 - LICENSE
 - Makefile.am
 - configure.ac

Source codes of OpenTimer are divided into different categories under the src/ folder. In order
to handle physical design file LEF/DEF reliably, we integrated the open-source LEF/DEF parser
from OpenEDA community (www.si2.org) into the OpenTimer.

 * LEF/ and DEF/: Codes for parsing .lef and .def files.
 * sdc/         : Codes for parsing .sdc files.
 * generic/     : Codes for generic definition files.
 * timer/       : Codes for core timing analysis.
 * debug/       : Codes for debugging.
 * dump/        : Codes for information dumping.
 * log/         : Codes for runtime logging.
 * shell/       : Codes for OpenTimer shell.
 * verilog/     : Codes for verilog parser.
 * liberty/     : Codes for liberty parser.
 * iterator/    : Codes for iterator.
 * spef/        : Codes for parasitics.

The directory golden/ stores the golden timing reference which is pre-generated based on TAU 2015
contest. Several example files are placed in the folder example/ which help users to understand
the usage of OpenTimer.


MAINTAINERS
-----------
Current maintainers:
 * Tsung-Wei Huang

Please report any bugs to Tsung-Wei Huang via twh760812@gmail.com