Patents Represented by Attorney Meryertons, Hood, Kivlin, Kowart & Goetzel, P.C.
  • Patent number: 7861192
    Abstract: A system and method for providing clock gating while reducing area and power on an integrated circuit (IC) chip. An array of registers or memory cells may have a single clock gating circuit, rather than multiple circuits such as one clock gating circuit for each bit of storage. The single clock gating circuit may be larger in size than each of the multiple clock gating circuits, but the single clock gating circuit may still have less capacitive loading. A reduction in overall allocated area allows floorplanning to offer less congested signal routing. Clock generation circuitry may be configured to provide a clock signal from a last ungated stage to clock enabling circuitry. A power reduction control unit may be configured to determine when the last ungated stage clock waveform is enabled/disabled within the clock gating circuitry.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 13, 2007
    Date of Patent: December 28, 2010
    Assignee: GLOBALFOUNDRIES Inc.
    Inventor: Umesh Chandra Chejara