A number of fundamental topics in the field of high performance clock distribution networks is covered in this book. High Performance Clock Distribution Networks is composed of ten contributions from authors at academic and industrial institutions. Topically, these contributions can be grouped within three primary areas. The first topic area deals with exploiting the localized nature of clock skew. The second topic area deals with the implementation of these clock distribution networks, while the third topic area considers more long-range aspects of next-generation clock distribution networks. High Performance Clock Distribution Networks presents a number of interesting strategies for designing and building high performance clock distribution networks. Many aspects of the ideas presented in these contributions are being developed and applied today in next-generation high-performance microprocessors.

Provides the only up-to-date source on the most recent advances in this often complex and fascinating topic. The only book to be entirely devoted to clocking Clocking has become one of the most important topics in the field of digital system design A "must have" book for advanced circuit engineers

With the advancement of nanometer scale processes in CMOS technologies, the demand for high performance VLSI systems continues to grow exponentially. The performance of a microprocessor is influenced by its clock distribution network. Clock skew penalizes the overall performance of the system. The task of minimizing clock skew in clock distribution networks continues to be critical in high speed circuits to maximize system performance. The objective of this research is to design a low skew clock distribution network by inserting Delay-Locked Loops with buffers along different clock paths of the clock distribution network. The delay-locked loops use delay lines which produce significantly lower skew and jitter than phase-locked loops. Clock skew can be reduced by employing DLLs in several appropriate places of the clock distribution network. The approach of distributing DLLs in a clock distribution network requires additional area but greatly improves the performance of VLSI systems.

Distributing power in high speed, high complexity integrated circuits has become a challenging task as power levels exceeding tens of watts have become commonplace while the power supply is plunging toward one volt. This book is dedicated to this important subject. The primary purpose of this monograph is to provide insight and intuition into the behavior and design of power distribution systems for high speed, high complexity integrated circuits.

History of the Book The last three decades have witnessed an explosive development in integrated circuit fabrication technologies. The complexities of cur rent CMOS circuits are reaching beyond the 100 nanometer feature size and multi-hundred million transistors per integrated circuit. To fully exploit this technological potential, circuit designers use sophisticated Computer-Aided Design (CAD) tools. While supporting the talents of innumerable microelectronics engineers, these CAD tools have become the enabling factor responsible for the successful design and implemen tation of thousands of high performance, large scale integrated circuits. This research monograph originated from a body of doctoral disserta tion research completed by the first author at the University of Rochester from 1994 to 1999 while under the supervision of Prof. Eby G. Friedman. This research focuses on issues in the design of the clock distribution net work in large scale, high performance digital synchronous circuits and particularly, on algorithms for non-zero clock skew scheduling. During the development of this research, it has become clear that incorporating timing issues into the successful integrated circuit design process is of fundamental importance, particularly in that advanced theoretical de velopments in this area have been slow to reach the designers' desktops.