Report Number: CSL-TR-94-600
Institution: Stanford University, Computer Systems Laboratory
Title: Environmental Limits on the Performance of CMOS Wave-Pipelined Circuits
Author: Nowka, Kevin J.
Author: Flynn, Michael J.
Date: January 1994
Abstract: Wave-pipelining is a circuit design technique which allows digital synchronous systems to be clocked at rates higher than can be achieved with conventional pipelining techniques. Wave-pipelining has been successfully applied to the design of SSI processor functional units, a Bipolar Population Counter, a CMOS adder, CMOS multipliers, and several simple CMOS circuits. For controlled operating environments, speed-ups of 2 to 10 have been reported for these designs. This report details the effects of temperature variation, supply voltage variation, and process variation on wave-pipelined static CMOS designs, derives limits for the performance of wave-pipelined circuits due to these variations, and compares the performance effects with those of traditional pipelined circuits. This study finds that wave-pipelined circuits designed for commercial operating environments are limited to 2 to 3 waves per pipeline stage when clocked from a fixed frequency source. Variable rate, internal clocking can approach the theoretical limit of waves at a cost of interface complexity.
http://i.stanford.edu/pub/cstr/reports/csl/tr/94/600/CSL-TR-94-600.pdf