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Synchronous Design Methodologies & Impedements To Synchronous Design

- Synchronous design uses a single common clock and reset is only used for initialization to avoid hazards and races. - The main considerations in synchronous design are flip-flop setup and hold times, clock skew, and asynchronous input synchronization which is commonly done using two flip-flops. - Common design trade-offs include performance vs area vs power. Design for speed focuses on throughput, latency, and timing while design for low power uses techniques like clock gating, dual-edge triggering, and lowering voltage.

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942 views39 pages

Synchronous Design Methodologies & Impedements To Synchronous Design

- Synchronous design uses a single common clock and reset is only used for initialization to avoid hazards and races. - The main considerations in synchronous design are flip-flop setup and hold times, clock skew, and asynchronous input synchronization which is commonly done using two flip-flops. - Common design trade-offs include performance vs area vs power. Design for speed focuses on throughput, latency, and timing while design for low power uses techniques like clock gating, dual-edge triggering, and lowering voltage.

Uploaded by

VenkataAkhil
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Synchronous Digital Design

Methodology and Guidelines


Digital System Design

Synchronous Design
All flip-flops clocked by one common clock
Reset only used for initialization
Races and hazards are no problem

Why synchronous design?


Hazard
The unwanted switching transients that may appear at
the output of a circuit are called Hazards.
The glitches that occur due to the structure of a circuit
and their propagation delays are called as hazards.
the hazards cause the circuit to malfunction. The main
cause of Hazards is the different propagation delays at
different paths.

Timing Hazard
Static hazard: possibility of a brief signal
value change when the signal was expected
to be stable, due to timing (glitch)
Dynamic hazard: possibility of multiple
output transitions caused by a single input
transition due to multiple signal paths with
different delays

Static Hazard

If d is the delay of each gate

Analyzing Static Hazards using


Karnaugh maps

A static hazard can


occur when
changing a single
input variable
causes a jump from
one prime implicant
to another
Solution: include an
additional prime
implicant

Eliminating hazards using FlipFlops

Synchronous Design
Three things must be ensured by the
designer:
Minimize and determine clock skew
Account for flip-flop setup and hold times
Reliably synchronize asynchronous inputs

Timing Analysis
CLOCK

Propagation
delay

Combinational path
delay

Slack

Setup
time

Hold
time

>0 Setup time margin


>0 Hold time margin

Clock skew
IN

SET

Q1

SET

CLK2

CLR

CLK

CLR

Q2

CLK

IN

CLK2

Q2

Example
Determine the maximum frequency of the
following circuit with and without skew

SET

CLR

Clock Jitter

Clock Gating
Clock gating is done to disable the clock for
low power consumption using a clken
signal
It is wrong to gate the clock in the
following way, instead use a synchronous
load (enable) signal
D

SET

CLK
EN
CLR

Asynchronous Inputs
It is impossible to guarantee setup and hold timing
constraints on inputs synchronized with a clock
unrelated to the system clock
ASYNCIN

SET

CLR

CLK
(SYSTEM CLOCK)

CLK

ASYNCIN

SYNCIN

SYNCIN

SYNCHRONOUS
SYSTEM

Asynchronous inputs
Synchronize only in one place
ASYNCIN

SET

CLR

SYNCIN1

Q
SYNCHRONOUS
SYSTEM

CLK
(SYSTEM CLOCK)

SET

CLR

SYNCIN2

Metastability
Metastability is a phenomenon that may occur if the setup
and hold time requirements of the FF are not met, leading
in the output settling in an unknown value after
unspecified time.

Reliable synchronizer design

Example
Design a synchronizer that synchronizes
two inputs async1 and async2 generated
with a 50 MHz clock CLK1, to a system
with a 33 MHz clock CLK2 totally
independent of CLK1. Draw appropriate
timing diagrams.

Mean-time between failures


exp(t r / )
MTBF (t r )
T0 f
f: frequency of flip-flop clock
a: number of asynchronous input changes per second in
flip-flop input
To, : constants depending on flip-flop electrical
characteristics
Assume a 10 Mhz clock, ts = 20 ns, To = 0.4 sec, = 1.5 ns
and that the asynchronous input can change 100,000 times
per second, then
tr = 1/f ts = 80 ns
MTBF(80ns) = exp(80/1.5)/0.410^710^5= 3.610^11 s

Cascaded synchronizer

Synchronizing bus transfers

Do not use dual f/f synchronizers in all


bits, this will only increase the chances
of metastability
Synchronize the control signals and
read the input when safe to do so

Synchronization circuit

FIFO Synchronizer basic concept

On burst transfers, the receiver


cannot afford to wait for the signal
to settle.
Solution: A dual-port RAM FIFO
Problem: How do we synchronize
the counters?

Summary
In order to avoid hazards and races, synchronous
design is used
In synchronous design a single common clock is
used and reset is only used for initialization
The only considerations in synchronous design are
the flip-flop setup and hold times, clock skew and
asynchronous input synchronization
Asynchronous inputs are commonly synchronized
using 2 flip-flops clocked with the synchronous
system clock
Synchronization should only be done in one place
In bus transfers, synchronize only the control
signals or use a FIFO

Design trade-offs

Common design trade-offs


Performance
Latency
Throughput
Delay (timing)

Area
Gates (ASIC)
Flip-flops/LUTs (FPGA)

Power consumption
Dynamic
Static
Leakage

Design for Speed


Design for High Throughput
Definition: High data rate, acceptable latency
Technique: Pipelining

Design for Low Latency


Definition: Output available as soon as possible
Technique: Parallelism, Removal of pipelining

Design for Timing


Definition: High clock speed, low delay between
registers
Technique: Add intermediate registers

Example 1: Design for low latency


(parallelism)

X=a+b+c+d

Delay = 3*add
Latency = 1 cycle
Throughput = X bits/clock

Delay = 2*add
Latency = 1 cycle
Throughput = X bits/clock

Example 1: Design for delay


X=a+b+c+d

Delay = 1*add + Reg


Latency = 2 cycles
Throughput = X bits/clock

Example 2: Design for delay


x=0;
for (i=0; i<4; i++)
x+= a[i]*b;

Delay: 1*Mul + 1 Add


Latency: 4 cycles
Throughput: X bits/4 cycles

Resource Sharing
Y= C1* X[0] + C2 *X[1] + C3*X[2]

Is it possible to perform all multiplications


with a single multiplier?
Is it possible to perform all additions with a
single accumulator?

Resource Sharing

Design for low-power


Power components:
Dynamic power consumption (switching):
power consumed due to charging and
discharging parasitic capacitances on gates
and wires
Static power consumption: Power
consumed when no switching
Leakage current power consumption:

Design for power


Clock Gating
Dual-edge triggered Flip-Flops
Lowering core voltage

Clock Gating
Clock gating is done to disable the clock for
low power consumption using a clken
signal
It is wrong to gate the clock in the
following way, instead use a synchronous
load (enable) signal or a global clock
multiplexer (if available) D Q
SET

CLK
EN

CLR

Dual-Edge Triggered Flip-Flops


Single-edge triggered FF
Dual-edge triggered FF
(same data rate)

Dual-edge triggered flip-flops should only be


used if available in the target technology
Otherwise, redundant flip-flops and gating will be
used to emulate the desired functionality

Lowering core voltage


Only reduce core voltage within acceptable
limits (5 to 10%)
Power consumption in a simple resistor is
proportional to the square of the voltage
Keep in mind that performance will degrade
too

Review questions/problems

Pipelining will make your circuit

Parallelism creates a

A. smaller
B. exhibit lower latency
C. Consume less power
D. exhibit higher throughput
A. latency/throughput trade-off
B. Performance/area trade-off
C. Area/power consumption trade-off
D. performance/power consumption trade-off

Pipeline the following datapath for a three-cycle latency so that you


get the maximum operation frequency. How much is the maximum
operation frequency?

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