The associative-skew clock routing problem

We introduce the associative skew clock routing problem, which seeks a clock routing tree such that zero skew is preserved only within identified groups of sinks. The associative skew problem is easier to address within current EDA frameworks than useful-skew (skew-scheduling) approaches, and defines an interesting tradeoff between the traditional zero-skew clock routing problem (one sink group) and the Steiner minimum tree problem (n sink groups). We present a set of heuristic building blocks, including an efficient and optimal method of merging two zero-skew trees such that zero skew is preserved within the sink sets of each tree. Finally, we list a number of open issues for research and practical application.