저전력 고성능 디지털 시스템을 위한 고신뢰도의 클럭 네트워크 설계 방법론

학위논문 (박사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 : 전기·컴퓨터공학부, 2015. 8. 김태환.오늘날의 회로 설계에서 공정변이가 회로 클럭의 타이밍의 변이에 미치는 영향은 매우 커짐에 따라, 전통적으로 사용되던 클럭 트리 구조를 기반으로 한 클럭 네트워크를 사용하는 것은 한계에 부딪히게 되었고, 이를 극복하기 위한 여러가지 기술들이 제안되었다. 본 논문에서는 변이에 강한 클럭 네트워크를 설계하기 위해, 연구 및 사용되고 있는 세 가지 기술에 대해 소개하고, 이들을 개선한 연구들을 제안한다. 첫째로, 이 논문에서는 클럭의 타이밍 문제를 회로 제작 이후 단계에서 조정할 수 있는 포스트 실리콘 조정 클럭 버퍼를 배치하는 문제에 대해 서술한다. 포스트 실리콘 조정 버퍼는 클럭의 지연시간을 회로가 제작된 이후의 단계에서 조정하 여 클럭의 타이밍 문제를 해결할 수 있지만, 버퍼 자체의 크기 때문에 최소한의 개수만 가장 효율적인 위치에 배치해야 하는 문제가 있다. 본 논문에서는 이전의 연구가 회로의 수율을 계산할 때 시간이 많이 걸리는 몬테-카를로 시뮬레이션을 사용하기 때문에 탐색 가능한 포스트 실리콘 조정 버퍼의 배치가 제한되는 문제가 있음을 지적한 후, 기존에 제안되었던 그래프 기반 회로 수율 계산 기법을 사용하여 효율적인 포스트 실리콘 조정 버퍼 배치를 찾을 수 있는 점진적이고 체계적인 방법을 제시한다. 다음은 클럭 시차 스케쥴링 방법에 대한 연구를 서술한다. 최근의 연구에서 제안되었던, 플립-플롭의 클럭에서 출력까지의 딜레이가 클럭의 준비시간과 유지시간에 의존한다는 유연한 플립-플롭 타이밍 모델 연구는 기존의 플립-플롭의 타이밍 특성들이 고정된 값이라는 가정에 기반한 정적 타이밍 분석의 정확성 문제를 해결할 수 있는 중요한 연구이다. 본 논문에서는 새로운 모델을 고려하여, 이전에 고전적인 플립-플롭 타이밍 특성 모델을 기반으로 진행되었던 클럭 시차 스케쥴링의 최적화 문제를 유연한 플립-플롭 타이밍 모델을 고려하여 해결하였다. 본 연구에서는 주어진 회로의 준비시간과 유지시간의 여유시간을 반복적이고 체계적으로 최대화하여 문제를 해결하였다. 마지막으로 클럭 스파인 네트워크의 합성을 자동화하는 문제에 대해 서술한다. 전통적인 클럭 트리 구조가 공정변이 문제를 해결하지 못했기 때문에 클럭 메쉬를 포함하는 다양한 대안적 구조가 제안되었다. 클럭 메쉬의 경우 공정변이에 의한 클럭 시차를 줄일 수 있었지만 이를 위해 와이어나 버퍼 등의 자원을 많이 소모하는 문제를 가지고 있다. 두 구조의 중간적 구조에는 클럭 트리의 노드를 연결하는 크로스 링크를 삽입하는 구조와 클럭 스파인 구조가 있다. 클럭 트리에 점진적인 수정을 가하여 만드는 크로스 링크와 달리, 클럭 스파인 구조는 트리나 이후에 제안된 메쉬와는 완전히 별개의 구조로, 이를 합성하는 방법도 매우 다르다. 그렇기 때문에 클럭 스파인을 합성하는 알고리즘은 필수적이라고 할 수 있으나, 합성 방법론이나 이를 자동화하는 방법에 관한 연구는 아직 없다. 본 논문에서는 우선, 클럭-게이팅을 지원하는 클럭 스파인을 주어진 클럭 시차 및 클럭 슬루 조건을 만족하면서 자원 및 전력 소모량을 최소화하는 문제에 대해 서술한다. 그리고, 회로에서 주어진 플립-플롭들을 클럭-게이팅 조건에서의 연관성을 고려하고 조직화하여 클럭 스파인을 삽입한 후, 클럭 시차 및 슬루 조건을 고려하여 버퍼를 삽입하는 알고리즘을 제안한다. 요약하면, 본 논문에서는 클럭의 타이밍 문제를 해결하기 위해 포스트-실리콘 조정 클럭 버퍼를 사용하는 테크닉과 클럭 시차 스케쥴링을 유연한 플립-플롭 타이밍 모델에서 적용하는 테크닉을 제시하고, 클럭의 타이밍 문제와 전력 소모 문제를 한번에 해결하기 위한 새로운 클럭 스파인 네트워크를 합성하는 자동화 알고리즘을 제시한다.As the process variation is dominating to cause the clock timing variation among chips to be much large, conventional clock tree based clock network is not able to guarantee the timing constraint of a digital system. To overcome the limitations of traditional clock design techniques, various techniques have been studied. This dissertation addresses three techniques that have been widely used for designing robust clock network and proposes developed methods. First, it is widely accepted that post-silicon tunable (PST) clock buffers can effectively resolve the clock timing violation. Since PST buffers, which can reset the clock delay to flip-flops after the chip is manufactured, impose a non-trivial implementation area and control circuitry, it is very important to minimally allocate PST buffers while satisfying the chip yield constraint. In this dissertation, we (1) develop a graph-based chip yield computation technique which can update yields very efficiently and accurately for incremental PST buffer allocation, based on which we (2) propose a systematic (bottom-up and top-down with refinement) PST buffer allocation algorithm that is able to fully explore the design space of PST buffer allocation. Second, clock skew scheduling is one of the essential steps that must be carefully performed during the design process. This dissertation addresses the clock skew optimization problem integrated with the consideration of the interdependent relation between the setup and hold skews, and clk-to-Q delay of flip-flops, so that the time margin is more accurately and reliably set aside over that of the previous methods, which have never taken the integrated problem into account. Precisely, based on an accurate flexible model of setup skew, hold skew, and clk-to-Q delay, we propose a stepwise clock skew scheduling technique in which at each iteration, the worst slack of setup and hold skews is systematically and incrementally relaxed to maximally extend the time margin. Lastly, clock tree with cross links and clock spine have an intermediate characteristics for skew tolerance and power consumption, compared to clock tree and clock mesh which are two extreme structures of clock network. Unlike the clock tree with links between clock nodes, which is a sort of an incremental modification of the structure of clock tree, clock spine network is a completely separated structure from the structures of tree and mesh. Consequently, it is necessary and essential to develop a synthesis algorithm for clock spines, which will be compatible to the existing synthesis algorithms of clock trees and clock meshes. To this end, this dissertation first addresses the problem of automating the synthesis of clock-gated clock spines with the objective of minimizing total clock power while meeting the clock skew and slew constraints. The key idea of our proposed synthesis algorithm is to identify and group the flip-flops with tight correlation of clock-gating operations together to form a spine while accurately predicting and maintaining clock skew and slew variations through the buffer insertion and stub allocation. In summary, this dissertation presents clock tuning techniques with consideration of post-silicon tuning, flexible flip-flop timing model, and clock-gated clock spine synthesis algorithm.Abstract i Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Clock Distribution Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.2 Process Variation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1.3 Flexible Flip-flop Timing Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.4 Clock Spine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.5 Contributions of This Dissertation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Chapter 2 POST-SILICON TUNABLE CLOCK BUFFER ALLOCATION BASED ON FAST CHIP YIELD COMPUTATION 8 2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 2.2 Systematic Exploration of PST Buffer Allocation . . . . . . . . . 10 2.2.1 Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 2.2.2 Problem Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 2.2.3 Allocation Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 2.3 Fast Timing Yield Computation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2.3.1 Preliminaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2.3.2 Incremental Yield Computation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 2.4 Experimental Result . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 2.5 PST Buffer Configuration Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 2.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Chapter 3 POST-SILICON TUNING BASED ON FLEXIBLE FLIP-FLOP TIMING 34 3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 3.2 Preliminary and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 3.2.1 Flexible Flip-Flop Timing Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 3.2.2 Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 3.3 Motivational Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 3.4 Clock Skew Scheduling for Slack Relaxation Based on Flexible Flip-Flop Timing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 3.4.1 Overall Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 3.4.2 Finding Local Clock Skew Schedule . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 3.5 Experimental Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 3.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Chapter 4 SYNTHESIS FOR POWER-AWARE CLOCK SPINES 61 4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 4.2 Preliminaries and Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 4.2.1 Clock Spine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 4.2.2 Activity Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 4.2.3 Power Computation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 4.3 Algorithm for Clock Spine Synthesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 4.3.1 Problem Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 4.3.2 Power-Aware Sink Clustering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 4.3.3 Spine Relaxation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 4.3.4 Spine Buffer Allocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 4.3.5 Top-Level Tree Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 4.4 Experimental Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 4.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Chapter 5 CONCLUSION 95 5.1 Chapter 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 5.2 Chapter 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 5.3 Chapter 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Bibliography 97 초록 106Docto

Population genetics and systematics of a species-rich clade of Neotropical reef fishes, the tubeblenny genus Acanthemblemaria

Neotropical coral reef fish communities are species-poor compared to those of the Indo-West Pacific. An exception to that pattern is the blenny clade Chaenopsidae, one of only three coral reef fish families endemic to the Neotropics. Within the chaenopsids, the genus Acanthemblemaria is the most species-rich. To understand the origin and maintenance of genetic and species diversity in these fishes, I characterized the population genetics for two Acanthemblemaria species, reconstructed the phylogeny of the group, and identified suites of correlated morphological characters responsible for the distinctive skull morphology of these fishes. By combining nuclear and mitochondrial sequence data I was able to recover the complex demographic history of two closely related Acanthemblemaria species, A. aspera and A. spinosa. Old population expansions in both species were obscured by a rapid mitochondrial substitution rate, but the mitochondrial DNA allowed the recovery of a recent expansion in A. aspera corresponding to a period of increased habitat availability. However, the older expansions that took place in both species were only recovered using the nuclear markers. Across the genus I found that mitochondrial COI is evolving nearly 100X faster than the nuclear markers and at an absolute rate of nearly 25% pairwise sequence divergence per million years. Replicate Bayesian phylogenetic analyses failed to converge on the same posterior distributions because proposals to update the rate multiplier parameter were rarely accepted, but when the tuning parameter was adjusted, all datasets converged quickly on to the same posterior distribution. When COI was included, posterior probabilities of the species tree were lower and topological estimates were worse than those from the nuclear-only dataset. The species tree that was constructed for the genus conflicted with the morphological phylogeny for the group, primarily due to the convergence of skull bones with spines. By performing phylogenetic analyses on these characters, I resolved some of the conflicts between the morphological and molecular phylogenies. Divergence time estimates recovered a mid-Miocene origin for the genus, with speciation both before and after the closure of the Isthmus of Panama. Some sister taxa were broadly sympatric, but many occur in allopatry

Modeling and Design Techniques for 3-D ICs under Process, Voltage, and Temperature Variations

Three-dimensional (3-D) integration is a promising solution to further enhance the density and performance of modern integrated circuits (ICs). In 3-D ICs, multiple dies (tiers or planes) are vertically stacked. These dies can be designed and fabricated separately. In addition, these dies can be fabricated in different technologies. The effect of different sources of variations on 3-D circuits, consequently, differ from 2-D ICs. As technology scales, these variations significantly affect the performance of circuits. Therefore, it is increasingly important to accurately and efficiently model different sources of variations in 3-D ICs. The process, voltage, and temperature variations in 3-D ICs are investigated in this dissertation. Related modeling and design techniques are proposed to design a robust 3-D IC. Process variations in 3-D ICs are first analyzed. The effect of process variations on synchronization and 3-D clock distribution networks, is carefully studied. A novel statistical model is proposed to describe the timing variation in 3-D clock distribution networks caused by process variations. Based on this model, different topologies of 3-D clock distribution networks are compared in terms of skew variation. A set of guidelines is proposed to design 3-D clock distribution networks with low clock uncertainty. Voltage variations are described by power supply noise. Power supply noise in 3-D ICs is investigated considering different characteristics of potential 3-D power grids in this thesis. A new algorithm is developed to fast analyze the steady-state IR-drop in 3-D power grids. The first droop of power supply noise, also called resonant supply noise, is usually the deepest voltage drop in power distribution networks. The effect of resonant supply noise on 3-D clock distribution networks is investigated. The combined effect of process variations and power supply noise is modeled by skitter consisting of both skew and jitter. A novel statistical model of skitter is proposed. Based on this proposed model and simulation results, a set of guidelines has been proposed to mitigate the negative effect of process and voltage variations on 3-D clock distribution networks. Thermal issues in 3-D ICs are considered by carefully modeling thermal through silicon vias (TTSVs) in this dissertation. TTSVs are vertical vias which do not carry signals, dedicated to facilitate the propagation of heat to reduce the temperature of 3-D ICs. Two analytic models are proposed to describe the heat transfer in 3-D circuits related to TTSVs herein, providing proper closed-form expressions for the thermal resistance of the TTSVs. The effect of different physical and geometric parameters of TTSVs on the temperature of 3-D ICs is analyzed. The proposed models can be used to fast and accurately estimate the temperature to avoid the overuse of TTSVs occupying a large portion of area. A set of models and design techniques is proposed in this dissertation to describe and mitigate the deleterious effects of process, voltage, and temperature variations in 3-D ICs. Due to the continuous shrink in the feature size of transistors, the large number of devices within one circuit, and the high operating frequency, the effect of these variations on the performance of 3-D ICs becomes increasingly significant. Accurately and efficiently estimating and controlling these variations are, consequently, critical tasks for the design of 3-D ICs

Clock Polarity Assignment Methodologies for Designing High-Performance and Robust Clock Trees

학위논문 (박사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 : 전기·컴퓨터공학부, 2016. 8. 김태환.In modern synchronous circuits, the system relies on one single signal, namely, the clock signal. All data sampling of flip-flops rely on the timing of the clock signal. This makes clock trees, which deliver the clock signal to every clock sink in the whole system, one of the most active components on a chip, as it must switch without halting. Naturally, this makes clock trees a primary target of optimization for low power/high performance designs. First, bounded skew clock polarity assignment is explored. Buffers in the clock tree switch simultaneously as the clock signal switch, which causes power/ground supply voltage fluctuation. This phenomenon is referred to as clock noise and brings adverse effects on circuit robustness. Clock polarity assignment technique replaces some of the buffers in the clock trees with inverters. Since buffers draw larger current at the rising edge of the clock while inverters draw larger current at the falling edge, this technique can mitigate peak noise problem at the power/ground supply rails. Second, useful skew clock polarity assignment method is developed. Useful clock skew methodology allows consideration of individual clock skew restraints between each clock sinks, allowing further noise reduction by exploiting more time slack. Through experiments with ISPD 2010 clock network synthesis contest benchmark circuits, the results show that the proposed clock polarity algorithm is able to reduce the peak noise caused by clock buffers by 10.9% further over that of the global skew bound constrained polarity assignment while satisfying all setup and hold time constraints. Lastly, as multi-corner multi-mode (MCMM) design methodologies, process variations and clock gating techniques are becoming common place in advanced technology nodes, clock polarity assignment methods that mitigate these problems are devised. Experimental results indicate that the proposed methods successfully satisfy required design constraints imposed by such variations. In summary, this dissertation presents clock polarity assignments that considers useful clock skew, delay variations, MCMM design methodologies and clock gating techniques.Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Clock Trees 1 1.2 Simultaneous Switching Noise 3 1.3 Clock Polarity Assignment Technique 4 1.4 Contributions of this Dissertation 5 Chapter 2 Clock Polarity Assignment Under Bounded Skew 7 2.1 Introduction 7 2.2 Motivational Example 9 2.3 Problem Formulation 13 2.4 Proposed Algorithm 17 2.4.1 Independence Assumption 17 2.4.2 Characterization of Noise 18 2.4.3 Overview of the Proposed Algorithm 19 2.4.4 Mapping WaveMin Problem to MOSP problem 22 2.4.5 A Fast Algorithm 26 2.4.6 Zone Sizing/Partitioning Method 27 2.5 Experimental Results 28 2.5.1 Experimental Setup 28 2.5.2 Noise Reduction 28 2.5.3 Simulation on Full Circuit 29 2.6 Effects of Clock Polarity Assignment on Simultaneous Switching Noise 34 2.6.1 Model of Power Delivery Network 34 2.6.2 Peak-to-Peak Voltage Swing 35 2.7 Effects of Decoupling Capacitors 36 2.8 Effects of Clock Polarity Assignment on Clock Jitter 40 2.8.1 Noise in Frequency Domain 40 2.9 Summary 43 Chapter 3 Clock Polarity Assignment Under Useful Skew 44 3.1 Introduction 44 3.2 Motivational Example 45 3.3 Problem Formulation 47 3.4 Proposed Algorithm 49 3.4.1 Integer Linear Programming Formulation and Linear Programming Relaxation 49 3.4.2 Formulating into Maximum Clique Problem 49 3.4.3 Scalable Algorithm for Clique Exploration 51 3.5 Experimental Results 54 3.5.1 Experimental Setup 54 3.5.2 Assessing the Performance of UsefulMin over Wavemin 56 3.6 Summary 57 Chapter 4 Extensions of Clock Polarity Assignment Methods 60 4.1 Coping With Thermal Variations 60 4.1.1 Introduction 60 4.1.2 Proposed Method 61 4.1.3 Experimental Results 66 4.2 Coping with Delay Variations 70 4.2.1 Introduction 70 4.2.2 The Impact of Process Variations on Polarity Assignment 71 4.2.3 Proposed Method for Variation Resiliency 72 4.2.4 Experimental Results 73 4.3 Coping With Multi-Mode Designs 75 4.3.1 Introduction 75 4.3.2 Proposed Method 76 4.3.3 Experimental Results 84 4.4 Orthogonality with Other Design Techniques ? Clock Gating 87 4.4.1 Introduction 87 4.4.2 Proposed Partitioning Method 87 4.4.3 Experimental Results 88 4.5 Summary 90 Chapter 5 Conclusion 92 5.1 Clock Polarity Assignment Under Bounded Skew 92 5.2 Clock Polarity Assignment Under Useful Skew 93 5.3 Extensions of Clock Polarity Assignment 93 Appendices 94 Chapter A Power Spectral Densities of ISCAS89 Circuits 95 Chapter B The Effect of Decoupling Capacitors 99 초록 109Docto

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books 36 (03) 1982

published or submitted for publicatio

Clock Tree and Flip-flop Co-optimization for Reducing Power Consumption and Power/Ground Noise of Integrated Circuits and Systems

학위논문 (박사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 공과대학 전기·컴퓨터공학부, 2017. 8. 김태환.For very-large-scale integration (VLSI) circuits, the activation of all flip-flops that are used to store data is synchronized by clock signals delivered through clock networks. Due to very high frequency of clock signal switches, the dynamic power consumed on clock networks takes a considerable portion of the total power consumption of the circuits. In addition, the largest amount of power consumption in the clock networks comes from the flip-flops and the buffers that drive the flip-flops at the clock network boundary. In addition, the requirement of simultaneously activating all flip-flops for synchronous circuits induces a high peak power/ground noise (i.e., voltage drop) at the clock boundary. In this regards, this thesis addresses two new problems: the problem of reducing the clock power consumption at the clock network boundary, and the problem of reducing the peak current at the clock network boundary. Unlike the prior works which have considered the optimization of flip-flops and clock buffers separately, our approach takes into account the co-optimization of flip-flops and clock buffers. Precisely, we propose four different types of hardware component that can implement a set of flip-flops and their driving buffer as a single unit. The key idea for the derivation of the four types of clock boundary component is that one of the inverters in the driving buffer and one of the inverters in each flip-flop can be combined and removed without changing the functionality of the flip-flops. Consequently, we have a more freedom to select (i.e., allocate) clock boundary components that is able to reduce the power consumption or peak current under timing constraint. We have implemented our approach of clock boundary optimization under bounded clock skew constraint and tested it with ISCAS 89 benchmark circuits. The experimental results confirm that our approach is able to reduce the clock power consumption by 7.9∼10.2% and power/ground noise by 27.7%∼30.9% on average.Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Clock Signal 1 1.2 Metrics of Clock Design 2 1.3 Clock Network Topologies 4 1.4 Multibit Flip-flop 5 1.5 Simultaneous Switching Noise 6 1.6 Contributions of This Dissertation 6 Chapter 2 Clock Tree and Flip-flop Co-optimization for Reducing Power Consumption 8 2.1 Introduction 8 2.2 Types of Boundary Optimization 9 2.3 Analysis of Four Types of Flip-flop 12 2.3.1 Internal Power Comparison 12 2.3.2 Characterization of Power Consumption 14 2.4 Problem Formulation 15 2.5 The Proposed Algorithm 17 2.5.1 Independence Assumption 17 2.5.2 BoundaryMin Algorithm 17 2.6 Experimental Results 29 2.6.1 Experimental Setup 29 2.6.2 Clock Tree Boundary Optimization Results 33 2.6.3 Capacitance Analysis on Flip-flops 38 2.6.4 Slew and Skew Analysis 39 2.6.5 Window Width Analysis 39 2.7 Conclusions 41 Chapter 3 Clock Tree and Flip-flop Co-optimization for Reducing Power/Ground Noise 42 3.1 Introduction 42 3.2 Current Characteristic of Four Types of Flip-flop 45 3.3 Motivational Example 47 3.4 Problem Formulation 52 3.5 Proposed Algorithm 54 3.5.1 An Overview 54 3.5.2 Superposition of Current Flows 55 3.5.3 Formulation to Instance of MOSP Problem 57 3.5.4 Selecting Target Power Grid Points 59 3.5.5 Consideration of Reducing Power Consumption 62 3.6 Experimental Results 62 3.7 Summary 65 Chapter 4 Conclusion 68 4.1 Clock Buffer and Flip-flop Co-optimization for Reducing Power Consumption 68 4.2 Clock Buffer and Flip-flop Co-optimization for Reducing Power/Ground Noise 69 초록 78Docto

Repeated and Time-Correlated Morphological Convergence in Cave-Dwelling Harvestmen (Opiliones, Laniatores) from Montane Western North America

BACKGROUND: Many cave-dwelling animal species display similar morphologies (troglomorphism) that have evolved convergent within and among lineages under the similar selective pressures imposed by cave habitats. Here we study such ecomorphological evolution in cave-dwelling Sclerobuninae harvestmen (Opiliones) from the western United States, providing general insights into morphological homoplasy, rates of morphological change, and the temporal context of cave evolution. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We gathered DNA sequence data from three independent gene regions, and combined these data with Bayesian hypothesis testing, morphometrics analysis, study of penis morphology, and relaxed molecular clock analyses. Using multivariate morphometric analysis, we find that phylogenetically unrelated taxa have convergently evolved troglomorphism; alternative phylogenetic hypotheses involving less morphological convergence are not supported by Bayesian hypothesis testing. In one instance, this morphology is found in specimens from a high-elevation stony debris habitat, suggesting that troglomorphism can evolve in non-cave habitats. We discovered a strong positive relationship between troglomorphy index and relative divergence time, making it possible to predict taxon age from morphology. Most of our time estimates for the origin of highly-troglomorphic cave forms predate the Pleistocene. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: While several regions in the eastern and central United States are well-known hotspots for cave evolution, few modern phylogenetic studies have addressed the evolution of cave-obligate species in the western United States. Our integrative studies reveal the recurrent evolution of troglomorphism in a perhaps unexpected geographic region, at surprisingly deep time depths, and in sometimes surprising habitats. Because some newly discovered troglomorphic populations represent undescribed species, our findings stress the need for further biological exploration, integrative systematic research, and conservation efforts in western US cave habitats

메쉬 기반의 클락 네트워크 설계 방법론

학위논문 (박사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 : 전기·컴퓨터공학부, 2015. 2. 김태환.The clock distribution network in a synchronous digital circuit delivers a clock signal to every storage element i.e., clock sink in the circuit. However, since the continued technology scaling increases PVT (process-voltage-temperature) variation, the increase of clock skew variation is highly likely to cause performance degradation or system failure at run time. Recently, to mitigate the clock skew variation, many researchers have taken a profound interest in the clock mesh network. However, though the structure of clock mesh network is excellent in tolerating timing variation, it demands significantly high power consumption due to the use of excessive mesh wire and buffer resources. Thus, optimizing the resources required in the mesh clock synthesis while maintaining the variation tolerance is crucially important. The three major tasks that greatly affect the cost of resulting clock mesh are (1) mesh segment allocation, (2) mesh buffer allocation and sizing, and (3) clock sink binding to mesh segments. Previous clock mesh optimization approaches solve the three tasks sequentially, one by one at a time, to manage the run time complexity of the tasks at the expense of losing the quality of results. However, since the three tasks are tightly inter-related, simultaneously optimizing all three tasks is essential, if the run time is ever permitted, to synthesize an economical clock mesh network. In this dissertation, we propose an approach which is able to tackle the problem in an integrated fashion by combining the three tasks into an iterative framework of incremental updates and solving them simultaneously to find a globally optimal allocation of mesh resources while taking into account the clock skew tolerance constraints. The core parts of this dissertation are a precise analysis on the relation among the resource optimization tasks and an establishment of mechanism for effective and efficient integration of the tasks. In particular, to handle the run time problem, we propose a set of speed-up techniques i.e., modeling RC circuit for eliminating redundant matrix multiplications, exploiting sliding window scheme, and fast buffer sizing effect estimation, which are fitted into our context of fast clock skew estimation in mesh resource optimization as well as an invention of early decision policies. In summary, this dissertation presents the efficient design methodology for clock mesh synthesis with consideration on integration of three tasks and reduction of runtime complexity.Abstract i Contents iii List of Figures vi List of Tables x 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.2 Contributions of This Dissertation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2 Background 5 2.1 Clock Distribution Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.2 Clock Network Topologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 2.3 Design Metrics of Clock Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2.4 The Effects of Variations on Clock Skew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 3 Clock Mesh Synthesis Flow 12 3.1 Elements of Clock Mesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 3.2 Conventional Clock Mesh Synthesis Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 3.3 Initial Grid Generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 3.4 Mesh Buffer Placement and Sizing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 3.5 Clock Mesh Optimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 4 Integrated Resource Allocation and Binding in Clock Mesh Synthesis 19 4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 4.2 Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 4.3 Framework of Clock Mesh Optimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 4.3.1 Incremental Resource Updates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 4.3.2 Constraints for Variation Tolerance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 4.3.3 Early Decision Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 4.3.4 Time Complexity Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 4.4 Fast Clock Skew Estimation Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 4.4.1 Partially Reusing Matrix Multiplication for Incremental Updates 41 4.4.2 Adopting Sliding Window Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 4.4.3 Adjusting Delay Caused by Buffer Resizing . . . . . . . . . . 44 4.5 Experimental Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 4.5.1 Experimental Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 4.5.2 Resource Requirement and Variation Tolerance Comparison . 48 4.5.3 Comparison with Clock Mesh Optimization using Worst Case Timing Analysis of Commercial Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 4.5.4 Analysis of the Effect of Proposed Techniques . . . . . . . . 58 4.5.5 Run Time Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 4.5.6 Accuracy and Run Time of Fast Clock Skew Estimation . . . 63 4.5.7 Electromigration Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 4.5.8 Run-time Analysis in Multi-thread Computing Environment . 70 4.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 5 Conclusion 74 Abstract in Korean 84Docto