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

Abstract—A possible idea is presented here for dealing with clock skew problems 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]. 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 the clock generators are certainly synchronized by pseudo-random noises.