Improving the Tolerance of Pipeline Based Circuits to Power Supply or Temperature Variations

A new methodology is proposed to increase the robustness of pipeline-based circuits. The goal is to improve signal integrity in the presence of power-supply voltage (V_DD) and/or temperature (T) variations, without degrading circuit performance. In the proposed methodology, we dynamically control the instant of data capture (the clock edge trigger) in key memory cells, according to local V_DD and/or T variations. This way, data integrity loss is avoided, and circuit tolerance to power supply and/or temperature variations is enhanced. The methodology is based on a dynamic delay buffer (DDB) block, used to sense V_DD/T variations and to induce dynamic clock skews driving a limited subset of memory elements. Experimental results based on SPICE simulations for 2 sequential circuits are used to demonstrate that careful design may lead to improvements on circuit tolerance to V_DD and/or T variations.