Avoiding Metastability in Hardware Software Interface (HSI) using CDC Techniques

Various IP blocks within an SoC are often required to work in different clock domains in order to satisfy the power constraints. Clock domain crossing (CDC) challenges faced by design engineers include:

– Speed and power requirements lead to designs with multiple asynchronous clock domains on different I/O interfaces and data being transferred from one clock domain to another.

– Transferring signals between asynchronous clock domains may lead to setup or hold timing violations of the flip-flops in the receiving clock domain.

– These violations may cause CDC signals to be metastable.

– Metastability may also arise from jitter between asynchronous clock domains, resulting in functional failures if the appropriate clock synchronizers are not present.

This webinar will examine the techniques used to avoid metastability as signals cross from one clock domain to another:

– Mux Synchronizer

– Two-Flip-Flop Synchronizer

– Handshake Synchronization

– Write operation

– Read operation

– Pulse

– Reset Domain Crossing

– Custom Synchronizer

Speaker Bio:

Freddy Nunez, a Senior Application Engineer at Agnisys since 2021, holds a degree in Computer Engineering from California State University, Northridge. He’s been instrumental in Agnisys’ success, leveraging his technical expertise to assist customers in navigating complex challenges and optimizing their systems. Freddy has experience with SystemRDL, IP-XACT, Verilog and SystemVerilog.

This webinar is in partnership with SemiWiki and Agnisys