Noise-Induced Synchronization among Sub-RF CMOS Analog Oscillators for Skew-Free Clock Distribution

We present on-chip oscillator arrays synchronized by random noises, aiming at skew-free clock distribution on synchronous digital systems. Nakao et al. recently reported that independent neural oscillators can be synchronized by applying temporal random impulses to the oscillators [1], [2]. We regard neural oscillators as independent clock sources on LSIs; i.e., clock sources are distributed on LSIs, and they are forced to synchronize through the use of random noises. We designed neuron-based clock generators operating at sub-RF region (< 1 GHz) by modifying the original neuron model to a new model that is suitable for CMOS implementation with 0.25-μm CMOS parameters. Through circuit simulations, we demonstrate that i) the clock generators are certainly synchronized by pseudo-random noises and ii) clock generators exhibited phase-locked oscillations even if they had small device mismatches. key words: clock distribution, synchronization, nonlinear oscillators, clock skew