The issue with readpss doing a MIC always again was resolved in IC5141 from PCR 604941. A new option "checkpss" was also added, which you can set to no to stop it trying to check if the readpss data is consistent or not.
As for writefinal/readic type problems, this unfortunately does happen sometimes. A true state saving mechanism for transient has been added in the MMSIM60 version of spectre (released a few weeks ago). From spectre -h tran:
Quote:State-file parameters
12 write File to which initial transient solution is to be
written.
13 writefinal File to which final transient solution is to be
written.
14 ckptperiod Checkpoint the analysis periodically using the
specified period.
15 saveperiod save the tran analysis periodically on the smulation
time.
16 saveclock=1800 s save the tran analysis periodically on the wall clock
time.
17 savetime=[...] save the analysis states into files on the specified
time points.
18 savefile save the analysis states into the specified file.
19 recover specify the file to be restored.
(note, it's the options with "save" or "recover" in the name which are new).
I expect it's in the release notes too. However, I just noticed that pss doesn't have similar options, so I don't think it will work (yet) with pss (i.e. if you want to recover a saved state (saved at the end of a transient) as the starting point for a pss); I'll file a PCR for that.
Andrew.