UC Santa Cruz

Clock distribution networks consume a significant portion of total chip power

in high-performance designs. Of many proposed solutions to this drain, clock resonance

has been shown to be an effective method for dealing with chip power and area issues

with savings of 20% in modern designs as well as a lower number of required clock

buffers. Current resonant solutions come with the limitation of optimal performance

at one particular frequency which may be unsuited for the task at hand. For instance,

switching from number crunching at work to a kitchen timer at home. If careful tuning

is not made then excess power may be spent instead of saved. This thesis introduces the

first scheme to produce a clock distribution network with a tunable resonant frequency.

Experimental results show the resonant frequency ranges from 1.2GHz to 2.6GHz. This

is done while saving up to 41% power on the clock distribution network when compared

to the non-resonant distribution.