| Tatum: A Fast, Flexible Static Timing Analysis (STA) Engine for Digital Circuits |
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| ##Overview |
| Tatum is primarily a library (`libtatum`) which provides a fast and flexible Static Timing Analysis (STA) engine for digital circuits. |
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| Tatum is a block-based timing analyzer suitable for integration with Computer-Aided Design (CAD) tools used to optimize and implement digital circuits. |
| Tatum supports both setup (max) and hold (min) analysis, clock skew and multiple clocks. |
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| Tatum operates on an abstract *timing graph* constructed by the host application, can be configured to use an application defined delay calculator. |
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| Tatum is optimized for high performance, as required by optimizing CAD tools. |
| In particular: |
| * Tatum performs only a single set of graph traversals to calculate timing information for all clocks. |
| * Tatum's data structures are cache optimized |
| * Tatum supports parallel analysis using multiple CPU cores |
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| ##Why was Tatum created? |
| I had need for a high performance, flexible STA engine for my PhD research into FPGA architecture and CAD tools. |
| I could find no suitable open source STA engines, and wrote my own. |
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| ##Origin of the Name |
| A *tatum* is a unit of time used in the computational analysis of music \[[1]\], named after the famous Jazz pianist [Art Tatum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Tatum). |
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| [1]: http://web.media.mit.edu/~tristan/phd/dissertation/chapter3.html#x1-390003.4.3 |
