Skew control methodology for useful-skew implementation

Abstract

Skew optimization is an important stage of the physical design. Previous studies suggested various skew optimization algorithms [1-7]. However, many of them have only focused on the zero-skew optimization [1-3], and several recent studies focus on a useful-skew optimization [5-7]. In this paper, we propose a novel skew optimization method for useful-skew implementation. Our proposed method generates optimal skew values, and applies them to a clock tree without any buffer insertion.