How often has someone asked you how to fix setup time violations?! And how often have you replied with many techniques ranging from cell upsizing, to logical retiming. From Vt swapping to utilizing useful clock skew or perhaps even reduction in the clock frequency?
And how often someone has trapped you for the asking the impact of clock frequency on the hold time!
Let's imagine a scenario. You designed a chip, and it's been manufactured. You discovered that there's one hold time violation and let's say, the slack is -10ps. Well, logical answer would be to throw that chip away since hold time cannot be met by tweaking the clock frequency. But it it were that simple, I wouldn't have asked this question! :P
Now, think a little. And answer what all "engineering tweaks" you can do in order to make the chip work, or I should say to try and make the chip work?
I expect a healthy discourse on this question, and I'm sure even I would end up learning a few things which I might not have appreciated till now. I request you to enlighten me with your thoughts.
Thanks! :)
