Report Number: CSL-TR-95-671
Institution: Stanford University, Computer Systems Laboratory
Title: Characterization and reduction of metastability errors in CMOS interface circuits
Author: Portmann, Clemenz Lenard
Date: June 1995
Abstract: In synchronous digital logic systems, asynchronous external signals must be referenced to the system clock or synchronized. Synchronization of asynchronous signals, however, inevitably leads to metastability errors. Metastability error rates can increase by orders of magnitude as clock frequencies increase in high performance designs, and supply voltages decrease in low- power designs. This research focuses on the characterization of metastability parameters and error reduction with no penalty in circuit performance. Two applications, high-speed flash analog- to-digital conversion and synchronization of asynchronous binary signals in application-specific integrated circuits have been investigated. Applications such as telecommunications and instrumentation for time-domain analysis require analog-to-digital converters with metastability error probabilities on the order of 10^-10 errors/ cycle, achievable in high performance designs only through the use of dedicated circuitry for error reduction. A power and area efficient externally pipelined metastability error reduction technique for flash converters has been developed. Unresolved comparator outputs are held valid, causing the encode logic to fail benignly in the presence of metastability. In an n bit converter, errors are passed as a single unsettled bit to the converter output and are reduced with an external pipeline of only n latches per stage rather than an internal pipeline of 2^n-1 latches per stage. An 80-MHz, externally pipelined, 7-bit flash analog-to-digital converter was fabricated in 1.2-um CMOS. Measured error rates were less than 10^-12 errors/cycle. Using internal pipelining with two levels of 127 latches to achieve equivalent performance would require 3.48 times more power for the error reduction circuitry with a Nyquist frequency input. This corresponds to a reduction in the total power for the implemented converter of 1.24 times compared with the internally pipelined converter. In synchronizers and arbiters, general purpose applications require mean time between failures on the order of one per year or tens of years. Comparison of previous designs has been difficult due to varying technologies, test setups, and test conditions. To address this problem, a test circuit for synchronizers was implemented in 2-um and 1.2-um CMOS technologies. Using the test setup, the evaluation and comparison of synchronizer performance in varying environments and technologies is possible. The effects of loading, output buffering, supply scaling, supply noise, and technology scaling on synchronizer performance are discussed.
http://i.stanford.edu/pub/cstr/reports/csl/tr/95/671/CSL-TR-95-671.pdf