Improving robustness of dynamic logic based pipelines

Abstract

Domino dynamic circuits are widely used in critical parts of high performance systems. In this paper we show that, in addition to the functional limitation associated to the non-inverting behavior of Domino gates, there are also robustness disadvantages when compared to inverting dynamic gates. We analyze and compare the tolerance to parameter and operating conditions variations of gate-level pipelines implemented with Domino and with DOE, an inverting dynamic gate we have recently proposed. Our experiments confirm that DOE pipelines are more robust and that improvements are due to its non-inverting feature.