Static Timing Analysis — Mastery & Signoff

Course promise

This is the STA signoff course for silicon teams. It teaches how to read timing reports, audit SDC, run MMMC, debug setup/hold failures, and close timing with regression discipline.

• Constraints and SDC quality before tool tricks.

• Delay graphs, path groups, MMMC, variation, and SI.

• ECO closure and senior debug playbooks.

• Every topic follows corner/mode/view -> metric -> artifact -> ECO -> regression.

Course map

constraints + delay fundamentals
  -> MMMC signoff matrix
  -> variation (OCV/AOCV/POCV) + SI
  -> ECO closure + debug playbook
  -> interview scenarios + cheatsheet

Related topics

• RTL — STA introduction

• Physical Design — timing closure

• Interface Protocols course

Section deep dive

STA signoff requires reproducible constraints, views, and scenarios.

Concept diagram

constraints -> graph -> slack

Metric graph

WNS trend

Reports and artifacts

• WNS

• TNS

• hold WNS

Mini case study

Tag every database.

Debug branches

• Check constraints first

Senior review question

Ask: what corner/mode/view proves this topic is closed or failing?