Add a capability to skip stages in testing for larger designs?

[oharboe]

I think it could be useful in regression testing to skip stages that take too long.

For instance #1452 would be a useful test, if detailed routing could be skipped. I do not know why global placement takes so long, but until that is fixed(either in OpenROAD or by modifying the design), placement too should be skipped.

mock-array used to take hours(I forget how long) and now it takes minutes. So it would be nice to start regression testing a design before it is fully optimized...

Thoughts?

[maliberty]

This would imply missing metrics in the results which, at least currently, would make it fail. Without placement or routing I'm not sure what we would be testing. I think it is better to work through such issues before making it part of the regression suite.

We could merge such a design as off by default and in development. Is there any open issue for gpl?

[oharboe]

Makes sense.

No issues yet. I have not studied the mock-aluregisterfile design and the stages.

I could file a feature request to speed it up?

[maliberty]

Sure though the more specific you can be the better.

[oharboe]

Not sure what to ask for except to make it faster ... For me global placement is a black box....

Run perf? a bit of suspend/resume debugging to see if I can glean something?

[maliberty]

Its enough to mention that is slow in global placement.

[oharboe]

@maliberty Here you go... #1527