Improve the performance and reliability of synchronous digital integrated circuits with this anthology of key literature on the design and analysis of clock distribution networks for VLSI based computer and signal processing systems. Beginning with an extensive tutorial overview and bibliography, this all in one source offers substantive coverage of the most relevant issues related to the design of clock distribution networks for application to high performance synchronous design. Related topics include clock skew; automated layout of clock nets; distributed buffet and interconnect delays; clock distribution design of structured custom VLSI circuits; wafer scale integration; systolic arrays; globally asynchronous, locally synchronous systems; microwave issues; low power clocking techniques; process insensitive circuits; deterministic and probabilistic delay models; system timing specifications; clock distribution networks of well known circuits and future research in clock distribution networks. The material presented in Clock Distribution Networks in VLSI Circuits and Systems will be valuable to anyone with an interest in synchronous integrated circuits, computer design, or signal processing implementation issues.

. . . ????????????????????????????????? ????????????? ????????????,????? ???? ??????????? ???????????????????? ???. THUCYDIDIS HISTORIAE IV:108 C. Hude ed. , Teubner, Lipsiae MCMXIII ???????????,????? ??,? ????????????????? ???????????????????? ?????? ?????? ?????? ??? ????????? ??? ?’ ?????????? ??’ ?????????? ? ??????? ??? ????????????? ???????. ???????????????????:108 ???????????? ?????????????????????? ?. ?????????????. ????????????,????? It being the fashion of men, what they wish to be true to admit even upon an ungrounded hope, and what they wish not, with a magistral kind of arguing to reject. Thucydides (the Peloponnesian War Part I), IV:108 Thomas Hobbes Trans. , Sir W. Molesworth ed. In The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Vol. VIII I have been introduced to clock design very early in my professional career when I was tapped right out of school to design and implement the clock generation and distribution of the Alpha 21364 microprocessor. Traditionally, Alpha processors - hibited highly innovative clocking systems, always worthy of ISSCC/JSSC publi- tions and for a while Alpha processors were leading the industry in terms of clock performance. I had huge shoes to ?ll. Obviously, I was overwhelmed, confused and highly con?dent that I would drag the entire project down.

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.

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.

As VLSI technology moves into the Ultra-Deep Sub-Micron (UDSM) era, manufacturing variations, power supply noise and temperature variations greatly affect the performance and yield of VLSI circuits. Clock Distribution Network (CDN), which is one of the biggest and most important nets in any synchronous VLSI chip, is especially sensitive to these variations. To address this problem variability-aware analysis and optimization techniques for VLSI circuits are needed. In the first part of this thesis an analytical bound for the unwanted skew due to interconnect variation is established. Experimental results show that this bound is safer, tighter and computationally faster than existing approaches. This bound could be used in variation-aware clock tree synthesis. The second part of the thesis deals with optimizing a given clock tree to minimize the unwanted skew variations. Non-tree CDNs have been recognized as a promising approach to overcome the variation problem. We propose a novel non-tree CDN obtained by adding cross links in an existing clock tree. We analyze the effect of the link insertion on clock skew variability and propose link insertion schemes. The non-tree CDNs so obtained are shown to be highly tolerant to skew variability with very little increase in total wire-length. This can be used in applications such as ASIC design where a significant increase in the total wire-length is unacceptable.