TAU 2014 Contest on Removing Common Path Pessimism during Timing Analysis Special Session Paper: Common Path Pessimism Removal (CPPR)

To protect against modeling limitations in considering design and electrical complexities, as well as variability, early and late signal propagation times in static timing analysis are often made pessimistic by addition of extra guard bands. However, these forced early-late splits introduce excessive and undesired pessimism. To this end, common path pessimism removal (CPPR) eliminates guaranteed redundant pessimism during timing analysis. This session aims to highlight the importance of CPPR during timing analysis, as well as explore novel methods for fast CPPR from the top performers of the TAU 2014 timing contest.