Spectral relations of supply noise and jitter with regular and feed forward clocking schemes

Abstract

High frequency supply noise affects chip performance in mechanisms that go beyond logic path failures due to voltage drops. One of the dominant chip performance degradation mechanisms due to high frequency noise is the direct introduction of clock jitter. Basic modeling studies powered by Fourier analysis help establish a clear and fundamental understanding of how noise is translated into jitter in the clock distribution path. In this context oscillator feed forward mechanism is also explored and analysis of its spectral response reveals how, once tuned properly, it benefits frequency boost.