Tapping Point Numerical-Based Search for Exact Zero-Skew RLC Clock Tree Construction

In this paper, the authors propose a new numerical method of tapping point search based on uniformly distributed RLC wire model. A tapping point for two subtrees based on the numerical analysis of the model is always determined for exact zero skew. With the bottom-up recursion, the characteristic of zero skew upward propagation for two hierarchical subtrees is proved for a multi-level clock tree. The approach can be associated with DME or MMM approach to construct an exact zero-skew clock tree. MCNC benchmarks are evaluated by our algorithm and the simulations of using the tapping point binary search and Hspice are for the comparison. Experimental results show that it always gets zero-skew clock trees and the running time also provides pretty fast