• 대한전자공학회논문지SD
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• 제41권5호
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• pp.43-50
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• 2004

현재의 반도체 공정은 Deep Sub- Micmn (DSM)으로 발전하면서, 선폭이 줄어들고 구동 주파수가 높아지고 있다. 이로 인해 clock source로부터 clock을 필요로 하는 각 단자(sink)까지의 '지연시간의 최대 차'로 정의되어지는 clock skew가 회로의 속도 향상에 있어 중요 제약요소가 되고 있다. 또한 이를 얼마나 줄이느냐 하는 것은 동기식 회로 설계에 있어 중요한 문제가 되고 있다. 따라서 낮은 clock skew를 위한 배선 기술에 대해 많은 연구들이 이루어지고 있다. 본 논문에서는 clock skew를 줄이기 위한 방법으로서 새로운 Advanced clock Tree Generation(ACTG) 방법을 개발하였다. ACTG는 2단계의 계층적 routing을 통해 최적의 clock tree를 구성한다. 본 논문에서 제안하는 알고리즘을 C 언어로 프로그램하여 구현하 후 벤치마크 테스트 데이터에 대하여 실험한 결과, 주어진 skew 범위를 만족시키면서 지연 시간을 감소시키는 효과를 얻을 수 있었다.

• Journal of information and communication convergence engineering
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• 제6권4호
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• pp.383-390
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• 2008

Clock skew modeling is important in the performance evaluation and prediction of clock distribution network and it is one of the major constraints for high-speed operation of synchronous integrated circuits. In clock routing synthesis, it is necessary to reduce the clock skew under the specified skew bound, while minimizing the cost such as total wire length and delay. In this paper, a new efficient bounded clock skew routing method is described, which generalizes the well-known bounded skew tree method by allowing loops, i.e., link-edges can be inserted to a clock tree when they are beneficial to reduce the clock skew and/or the wire length. Furthermore, routing topology construction and wire sizing is used to reduce clock delay.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• 제12권2호
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• pp.139-149
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• 2012

A 3D stacked IC is made by multiple dies (possibly) with heterogeneous process technologies. Therefore, die-to-die variation in 2D chips renders on-package variation (OPV) in a 3D chip. In spite of the different variation effect in 3D chips, generally, 3D die stacking can produce high yield due to the smaller individual die area and the averaging effect of variation on data path. However, 3D clock network can experience unintended huge clock skew due to the different clock propagation routes on multiple stacked dies. In this paper, we analyze the on-package variation effect on 3D clock networks and show the necessity of a post silicon management method such as body biasing technique for the OPV induced 3D clock skew control in 3D stacked IC designs. Then, we present a parametric yield improvement method to mitigate the OPV induced 3D clock skew.

• ETRI Journal
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• 제36권6호
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• pp.931-941
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• 2014

Many methodologies for clock mesh networks have been introduced for two-dimensional integrated circuit clock distribution networks, such as methods to reduce the total wirelength for power consumption and to reduce the clock skew variation through consideration of buffer placement and sizing. In this paper, we present a methodology for clock mesh to reduce both the clock skew and the total wirelength in three-dimensional integrated circuits. To reduce the total wirelength, we construct a smaller mesh size on a die where the clock source is not directly connected. We also insert through-silicon vias (TSVs) to distribute the clock signal using an effective clock TSV insertion algorithm, which can reduce the total wirelength on each die. The results of our proposed methods show that the total wirelength was reduced by 12.2%, the clock skew by 16.11%, and the clock skew variation by 11.74%, on average. These advantages are possible through increasing the buffer area by 2.49% on the benchmark circuits.

• 대한전자공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한전자공학회 1999년도 추계종합학술대회 논문집
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• pp.943-946
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• 1999

In this paper, we present a new clock routing algorithm which minimizes total wirelength under any given path-length skew bound. The algorithm onstructs a bounded-skew tree(BST) in two steps:(ⅰ) a bottom-up phase to construct a binary tree of shortest-distance feasible regions which represent the loci of possible placements of clock entry points, and (ⅱ) a top-down phase to determine the exact locations of clock entry points. Experimental results show that our clock routing algorithm, named BST/DME, can produce a set of solutions with skew and wirelength trade-off.

• 대한전자공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한전자공학회 1998년도 추계종합학술대회 논문집
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• pp.1009-1012
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• 1998

An efficient algorithm for clock skew optimization is proposed in this paper. It construct a new clock routing topology which is the generalized graph model while previous methods uses tree-structured routing topology. Edge-insertion technique is used in order to reduce the clock skew. A link-edge is inserted repeatedly between two sinks whose delay difference is large and the distance is small. As a result, the delay of a sink which has the longer delay is decreased and the clock skew is reduced. The proposed algorithm is implemented in C programming language. From the experimental results, we can get the total wire length minimization under the given skew bound.

• ETRI Journal
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• 제32권6호
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• pp.854-862
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• 2010

One-way delay variation (OWDV) has become increasingly of interest to researchers as a way to evaluate network state and service quality, especially for real-time and streaming services such as voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) and video. Many schemes for OWDV measurement require clock synchronization through the global-positioning system (GPS) or network time protocol. In clock-synchronized approaches, the accuracy of OWDV measurement depends on the accuracy of the clock synchronization. GPS provides highly accurate clock synchronization. However, the deployment of GPS on legacy network equipment might be slow and costly. This paper proposes a method for measuring OWDV that dispenses with clock synchronization. The clock synchronization problem is mainly caused by clock skew. The proposed approach is based on the measurement of inter-packet delay and accumulated OWDV. This paper shows the performance of the proposed scheme via simulations and through experiments in a VoIP network. The presented simulation and measurement results indicate that clock skew can be efficiently measured and removed and that OWDV can be measured without requiring clock synchronization.

• 대한전자공학회논문지SD
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• 제41권4호
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• pp.1-8
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• 2004

고속 저전력 디지털 시스템을 위해 클록 스큐를 최소화하고 동적 파워 소모를 줄이는 새로운 클록 분배 방법을 제안하였다. 제안된 방법은 접힌 라인구조(FCL)과 위상 섞임 회로(phase blending circuit)을 이용하여 Zero-skew 특성을 갖는다. FCL에 적합한 라인 구조를 분석하기 위해, 마이크로 스트립과 코플라너 라인을 FCL형 클록 라인으로 분배되었다. 시뮬레이션 결과는 l0㎜ 떨어져 있는 두 리시버 사이의 최대 클록 스큐가 1㎓에서 10psec보다 적고 20㎜ 떨어져 있는 두 리시버 사이의 최대 클록 스큐는 1㎓에서 60 psec보다 작음을 보였다. 또한, 공정, 전압, 온도 변화에 무관하게 클록 신호들의 스큐가 변하지 않음을 알 수 있었다.

• 전자공학회논문지C
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• 제36C권11호
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• pp.64-74
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• 1999

본 논문에서는 연결 에지 추가 기법을 이용하여 주어진 클락 스큐를 만족시키면서 동시에 총 배선 길이를 증가시키지 않는 새로운 클락 배선 최적화 알고리즘을 제안한다. 고속의 동기식 집적 회로에서는 클락 스큐가 회로의 속도를 제한하는 주된 요소로 작용하므로 성능의 향상을 위해서는 클락 스큐를 최소화해야 한다. 일반적으로 클락 스큐를 최소화하면 총 배선 길이가 증가하므로 오동작하지 않는 클락 스큐 범위 내에서 클락 배선을 수행한다. 이를 이용하여 본 논문에서는 제로 스큐 트리에 연결 점 이동 방법을 적용하여 총 배선길이와 지연 시간을 감소시킨다. 제안하는 알고리즘은 클락 트리의 두 노드 사이에 연결 에지를 추가하여 일반적인 그래프 형태의 클락 토폴로지를 구성하여 주어진 클락 스큐 범위를 만족시키고 동시에 총 배선장의 증가를 억제한다. 연결 에지를 구성하는 두 노드를 선택하기 위한 새로운 비용 함수를 고안하였다. 클락 트리 상에서 지연 시간의 차이가 크면서 거리가 가까운 두 노드를 연결함으로서 싱크 사이의 지연 시간의 차를 감소시켜서 클락 스큐를 감소시킨다. 또한 클락 신호선의 지연 시간 최소화를 위하여 배선 토폴로지 설계 및 배선 폭 조절 알고리즘을 개발하였다. 본 논문에서 제안하는 알고리듬을 C 프로그램 언어로 구현하여 실험한 결과 주어진 스큐 범위를 만족시키면서 지연 시간을 감소시키는 효과를 얻을 수 있었다

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• 제16권1호
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• pp.11-22
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• 2016

Clock skew scheduling is one of the essential steps to be carefully performed during the design process. This work addresses the clock skew optimization problem integrated with the consideration of the inter-dependent relation between the setup and hold times, and clock to-Q delay of flip-flops, so that the time margin is more accurately and reliably set aside over that of the previous methods, which have never taken the integrated problem into account. Precisely, based on an accurate flexible model of setup time, hold time, and clock-to-Q delay, we propose a stepwise clock skew scheduling technique in which at each iteration, the worst slack of setup and hold times is systematically and incrementally relaxed to maximally extend the time margin. The effectiveness of the proposed method is shown through experiments with benchmark circuits, demonstrating that our method relaxes the worst slack of circuits, so that the clock period ($T_{clk}$) is shortened by 4.2% on average, namely the clock speed is improved from 369 MHz~2.23 GHz to 385 MHz~2.33 GHz with no time violation. In addition, it reduces the total numbers of setup and hold time violations by 27.7%, 9.5%, and 6.7% when the clock periods are set to 95%, 90%, and 85% of the value of Tclk, respectively.