For synchronized designs, data transfer between functional elements are synchronized by

clock signals. In a top level digital design, you will have one more more clock
sources, like PLLs or oscillators within the chip. You may also have an external
clock source connection through an IO. For a digital only block, you will have a
clock pin that will be the clock source for the block in question. Clock balancing is
important for meeting the design constraints and clock tree synthesis is done after
placement to achieve the performance goals.
After placement you have positions of all the cells, including macros and standard cells. However, you
still have an ideal clock. (For simplicity, we will assume that we are dealing with a single clock for the
whole design). At this stage, buffer insertion and gate sizing and any other optimization technique is
employed on the data paths, but no change is done to the clock net.
The same clock net connects all the synchronous elements in the design, irrespective of the number.
This is how your designs clock network is at this point.

clock net before CTS

This is definitely not something we want. Think just about the load of one clock net. No driver can drive
that many flops! But when it is a synchronising signal like clock, load or fanout is not the only thing we
are worried about. We also want a balanced tree, that is the skew value for the clock tree should be
zero. After clock tree synthesis, the clock net will be buffered as below.

Clock Net After CTS.

The main concerns in CTS are:

1. Skew One of the major goals of CTS is to reduce clock skew.
Let is see some definitions before we go into clock skew.
Clock Source
Clock sources may be external or internal to your chip/block. But for CTS, what we are
concerned about is the point from where the clock propagation starts for the digital
circuitry. The can be a IO port, outputs or PLL,Oscillators, or even the outputs of a gate
down the line. (e.g a mux output).A clock source for CTS may also be specified using
create_generated_clock command. This defines an internally generated clock for which
you want to build a separate tree, with its own skew, timing and inter-clock relations.
You specify the clock source(s), using the command create_clock.
create_clock -name XTALCLK -period 100 -waveform { 0 50 } [get_pins {xtal_inst/OUT}] create_clock -name
clk -period 100 -waveform { 0 50 } [get_ports {clk}] create_generated_clock -name div_clk1 \ -source
[get_pins {block1/clk_out}] -divide_by 2 \ -master_clock [get_clocks {clk}]

create_clock -name XTALCLK

{xtal_inst/OUT}]
create_clock -name clk
1
2
3
4
5
6

-period 100 -waveform { 0 50 } [get_pins

-period 100 -waveform { 0 50 } [get_ports {clk}]

create_generated_clock -name div_clk1 \

-source [get_pins {block1/clk_out}] -divide_by 2 \
-master_clock [get_clocks {clk}]

Clock Sinks
Sinks or clock stop points are nodes which receive the clock. Default sinks are the clock
pins of your synchronous elements like Flipflops.
Now let us define skew as the maximum difference among the delays from the clock source to
clock sinks..

In the picture above, the delay to clock sinks are given. The skew in this case is the difference
between the maximum delay and minimum delay.
Skew = 20ns-5ns = 15ns
The goal of clock tree synthesis is to get the skew in the design to be close to zero. i.e. every
clock sink should get the clock at the same time.
2. Power Clock is a major power consumer in your design. Clock power consumption depends on
switching activity and wire length. Switching activity is high, since clock toggles constantly. Clock
gating is a common technique for reducing clock power by shutting off the clock to unused sinks.
Clock gating per se is not done in layout; it should be incorporated in the design. However,lock

tree synthesis tools can recognise the clock gates, and also do a power aware CTS.

In the picture above, FF1 gets the ungated clock CLK, and FF2 and any subsequent flop gets a
gated clock. This clock is turned on only when the signal EN is present. (See ICG cells)
Make sure that you specify the clock as propagated at CTS stage. i.e. instead of ideal delay for clock, you
are now calculating the actual delay value for the clock. This will in turn give you a more realistic report
of the timing of the design. You can propagate the clock using the command set_propgated_clock
[all_clocks]