Application of clock gating techniques at a flip-flop level to switching noise reduction in VLSI circuits

One of the most important sources of switching noise in large VLSI circuits is the clock-driven circuitry, meaning that memory elements are the main source of noise in digital circuits. This paper faces the application of clock-gating, a well known low-power technique, to the reduction of switching-noise generation. Sources of switching noise in master-slave flip-flops will be analyzed. It will be shown how different solutions for the clock-gated logic show very different results regarding switching-noise generation. Illustrative examples characterized through HSPICE simulations, as well as the application of clock-gating to 16-bit synchronous counter as demonstrator, will provide useful design guidelines for reduction of switching noise generation.