Abstract
Clock skew optimization has been an important concern in circuit designs. To overcome the influence caused by PVT variations, the automatic skew synchronization scheme can dynamically adjust and reduce the clock skew after a chip is manufactured. There are two key components in a skew synchronization scheme: Adjustable Delay Buffer (ADB) and Phase Detector (PD). Most previous researchers emphasize on ADB placement issues. In this thesis, we show that how FFs are connected by PDs can also greatly influence the final clock skew due to limitations of a practical ADB and PD design. We first analyze the worst-case clock skew of PD connection structures. Then we propose an algorithm to generate an optimal PD connection structures resulting in the minimum clock skew. Our experimental results are very encouraging.