Tom Spyrou - OpenROAD development, aim, roadmap and integration with OpenLANE
Tom Spyrou is a long time EDA developer who has worked at large and small companies. In 1988 Developed QTV at VLSI technology. It was the first STA engine to be trusted to sign off devices for fabrication without timing based simulation.He was the original architect of PrimeTime STA algorithm.Manager of Cadence Common timing Engine and precursor to Open AccessSenior technical positions at Synopsys, Cadence, Simplex, AMD, Altera and Intel. Since 2019 he has been the Chief Architect and Technical Project Manager of OpenROAD since 2019. We have just heard the announcement that OpenLANE will become the defacto flow for OpenROAD. So I felt very lucky that he was willing to spend half an hour talking to us about a wide range of topics including: OpenROAD history & contextWhat is the aim of OpenROADState of the art in industry vs researchTraining the next generation of EDA developersShortage of EDA developersUse of other PDKs besides Sky130Value of open source PDKsRoadmap and improvements: PPAMachine learning additions for OpenROADCloud scale compute for OpenROADOpenLANE and OpenROAD collaboration announcementFuture hopes