Timing closure

Last updated August 05, 2023

The Timing closure in VLSI design and electronics engineering is the process by which a logic design of a clocked synchronous circuit consisting of primitive elements such as combinatorial logic gates ( AND , OR , NOT , NAND , NOR , etc.) and sequential logic gates (flip flops, latches, memories) is modified to meet its timing requirements. Unlike in a computer program where there is no explicit delay to perform a calculation, logic circuits have intrinsic and well defined delays to propagate inputs to outputs.

Overview

In simple cases, the user can compute the path delay between elements manually. If the design is more than a dozen or so elements this is impractical. For example, the time delay along a path from the output of a D-Flip Flop, through combinatorial logic gates, then into the next D-Flip Flop input must satisfy (be less than) the time period between synchronizing clock pulses to the two flip flops. When the delay through the elements is greater than the clock cycle time, the elements are said to be on the critical path. The circuit will not function when the path delay exceeds the clock cycle delay so modifying the circuit to remove the timing failure (and eliminate the critical path) is an important part of the logic design engineer's task. Critical path also defines the maximum delay in all the multiple register-to-register paths, and it must not be greater than the clock cycle time. After meeting the timing closure, one way to improve the circuit performance is to insert a register in between the combinational path of the critical path. This might improve the performance but increases the total latency (maximum number of registers from input to output path) of the circuit.

Many times logic circuit changes are handled by user's EDA tools based on timing constraint directives prepared by a designer. The term is also used for the goal that is achieved, when such a design has reached the end of the flow and its timing requirements are satisfied.

The main steps of the design flow, which may be involved in this process, are logic synthesis, placement, clock-tree synthesis and routing. A single reference clock is often cascaded and synthesized into many different output blocks of clocks resulting into a tree structure.

With present technologies all of them need to be timing-aware for a design to properly meet its timing requirements, but with technologies in the range of the micrometre only logic synthesis EDA tools had such a prerequisite.

Design automation tools

Nevertheless, even if timing-awareness was extended to all these steps starting from well-established principles used for logic synthesis, the two phases, logic and physical, of the timing closure process are conventionally handled by different design teams and different EDA tools. Design Compiler by Synopsys, Encounter RTL Compiler by Cadence Design Systems and BlastCreate by Magma Design Automation are examples of logic synthesis tools. IC Compiler by Synopsys, SoC Encounter by Cadence Design Systems and Blast Fusion by Magma Design Automation are examples of tools capable of timing-aware placement, clock tree synthesis and routing and therefore used for physical timing closure.

When the user requires the circuit to meet exceptionally difficult timing constraints, it may be necessary to utilize machine learning ^[1] programs, such as InTime by Plunify, to find an optimum set of FPGA synthesis, map, place and route tool configuration parameters that ensures the circuit will close timing.

A timing requirement needs to be translated into a static timing constraint for an EDA tool to be able to handle it.

Notes

Related Research Articles

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Verilog, standardized as IEEE 1364, is a hardware description language (HDL) used to model electronic systems. It is most commonly used in the design and verification of digital circuits at the register-transfer level of abstraction. It is also used in the verification of analog circuits and mixed-signal circuits, as well as in the design of genetic circuits. In 2009, the Verilog standard was merged into the SystemVerilog standard, creating IEEE Standard 1800-2009. Since then, Verilog is officially part of the SystemVerilog language. The current version is IEEE standard 1800-2017.

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In electronics and especially synchronous digital circuits, a clock signal is an electronic logic signal which oscillates between a high and a low state at a constant frequency and is used like a metronome to synchronize actions of digital circuits. In a synchronous logic circuit, the most common type of digital circuit, the clock signal is applied to all storage devices, flip-flops and latches, and causes them all to change state simultaneously, preventing race conditions.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Physical design (electronics)</span>

In integrated circuit design, physical design is a step in the standard design cycle which follows after the circuit design. At this step, circuit representations of the components of the design are converted into geometric representations of shapes which, when manufactured in the corresponding layers of materials, will ensure the required functioning of the components. This geometric representation is called integrated circuit layout. This step is usually split into several sub-steps, which include both design and verification and validation of the layout.

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In the automated design of integrated circuits, signoff checks is the collective name given to a series of verification steps that the design must pass before it can be taped out. This implies an iterative process involving incremental fixes across the board using one or more check types, and then retesting the design. There are two types of sign-off's: front-end sign-off and back-end sign-off. After back-end sign-off, the chip goes to fabrication. After listing out all the features in the specification, the verification engineer will write coverage for those features to identify bugs, and send back the RTL design to the designer. Bugs, or defects, can include issues like missing features, errors in design, etc. When the coverage reaches a maximum% then the verification team will sign it off. By using a methodology like UVM, OVM, or VMM, the verification team develops a reusable environment. Nowadays, UVM is more popular than others.

Power gating is a technique used in integrated circuit design to reduce power consumption, by shutting off the current to blocks of the circuit that are not in use. In addition to reducing stand-by or leakage power, power gating has the benefit of enabling Iddq testing.

In electronics, flip-flops and latches are circuits that have two stable states that can store state information – a bistable multivibrator. The circuit can be made to change state by signals applied to one or more control inputs and will output its state. It is the basic storage element in sequential logic. Flip-flops and latches are fundamental building blocks of digital electronics systems used in computers, communications, and many other types of systems.

References

Phy-TC.Com. This article is derived from the document Timing closure by Alessandro Uber.

↑ Yanghua, Que (2016). "Boosting Convergence of Timing Closure using Feature Selection in a Learning-driven Approach" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-09-18.

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[1] Yanghua, Que (2016). "Boosting Convergence of Timing Closure using Feature Selection in a Learning-driven Approach" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-09-18.

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