A high-speed, low-power clock generator for a microprocessor application

This paper discusses the design of the clock generator for the Alpha 21264. As the speed performances are of primary concern in the whole design, the clock-generator jitter and phase misalignment must be as low as possible in a very noisy environment. A dedicated on-chip voltage regulator based on a bandgap reference has been designed to reduce the effect of supply noise on the clock generator. To avoid a large voltage drop across the power-supply bond wires during the startup sequence, the core frequency can be increased by steps in one period of the core clock, with a limited frequency overshoot and no missing pulses. The circuit has been implemented in a CMOS 0.35 μm process. The voltage-controlled-oscillator frequency range is between 350 MHz and 2.8 GHz, with a peak-to-peak cycle-to-cycle jitter lower than 16 ps. While booting Unix on a system, the maximum phase misalignment is lower than ±100 ps