Circuitry and method for timing speculation via toggling functional critical paths

• Main Authors: McClements Trent, Hughes Andrew, Taneja Sanjiv, Quinton Bradley
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 07.02.2017
• Subjects: BASIC ELECTRONIC CIRCUITRY; ELECTRICITY; PULSE TECHNIQUE

Toggling functional critical path timing sensors measure delays in toggling functional critical paths that are replicas of actual critical paths or representations of worst-case delay paths. A Toggle flip-flop or Linear-Feedback-Shift Register (LFSR) drives high-transition-density test patterns to the toggling functional critical paths. When a toggling functional critical path's delay fails to meet set-up timing requirement to a next register, the toggling functional critical path timing sensors signal a controller to increase VDD. When no failures occur over a period of time, the controller decreases VDD. A margin delay buffer adds a delay to the toggling functional critical path before being clocked into an early capture flip-flop. A reference register receives the test pattern without the delay of the toggling functional critical path, and an exclusive-OR (XOR) gate compares outputs of reference and early capture flip-flops to generate timing failure signals to the controller.