Enhanced GALS Techniques for Datapath Applications

Based on a previously reported request driven technique for Globally-Asynchronous Locally-Synchronous (GALS) circuits this paper presents two significant enhancements. Firstly, the previously required local ring oscillators are avoided. Instead, an external clock with arbitrary phase for each GALS block is used. Details of the required wrapper circuitry, the proposed design flow and performance are provided. Secondly, to reduce supply noise, a novel approach applying individual clock jitter for GALS blocks is proposed. A simulation using the jitter technique shows that for a typical GALS system, the power spectrum of the supply current can be reduced by about 15 dB.