Asynchronous in a synchronous world - Introduction

I am composing this article to explore various aspects of clock and data synchronization.

The first part of the article talks about Level Synchronizers, Edge Synchronizers and Pulse Synchronizers. The second part deals with Synthesis and Scripting Techniques for Designing Multi-Asynchronous Clock Designs.

Applications, including disk-drive controllers, CDROM/DVD controllers, modems, network interfaces,and network processors, bear inherent challenges moving data across multiple clock domains. When signals travel from one clock domain to another, the signal appears to beasynchronous in the new clock domain.

In todays design flows we have many software programs to help them create million-gate circuits, but these programs do not solve the problem of signal synchronization. It is up to the designer to know reliable design techniques that reduce the risk of failure forcircuits communicating across clock domains.

The first step in managing multiclock designs is to understand the problem of signal stability. When a signal crosses a clock domain, it appears to the circuitry in the new clock domain as an asynchronous signal. The circuit that receives this signal needs to synchronize it. Synchronization prevents the metastable state of the first storage element (flip-flop) in the new clock domain from propagating throughthe circuit.

Metastability is the inability of a flip-flop to arrive at a known state in a specific amount of time. When a flip-flop enters a metastable state, you can predict neither the element's output voltage
level nor when the output will settle to a correct voltage level. During this settling time, the flip-flop's output is at some intermediate voltage level or may oscillate and can cascade the invalid output level to flip-flops farther down the signal path. The input must be stable during a small window of time around the active edge of the clock for any flip-flop. This window of time is a function of the design of the flip-flop, the implementation technology, operating conditions, and the load on the output for outputs that are not buffered. Sharp edge rates on the input signal minimize the window.More windows of vulnerability arise as the clock frequency increases, and the probability of hitting the window increases as the data frequency increases.