Abstract
To save power consumption, it has been shown that the clock signal can be gated without changing the functionality under certain clock-gating conditions. We observe that the clock-gating conditions and the next-state function of a Flip-Flop (FF) are correlated and can be used for sequential optimization. We show that the implementation of the next-state function of any FF can be just an inverter if the clock signal is appropriately gated. By exploiting the flexibility between the clock-gating conditions and the next- state function, we propose an iterative optimization technique to minimize the overall timing. Because our methodology is totally different from the traditional ones, we obtain extraordinarily good timing results on certain circuits.