The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 17, 2002
Filed:
May. 31, 2000
Charles Chang, Newbury Park, CA (US);
Steven Beccue, Oxnard, CA (US);
Conexant Systems, Inc., Newport Beach, CA (US);
Abstract
An improved flip-flop circuit exhibits a higher phase margin than conventional flip-flop circuits without a substantial increase in operating power. The flip-flop circuit includes a master latch circuit operatively coupled to a slave latch circuit. The flip-flop circuit uses any number of techniques to delay the hold-to-sample transition of the slave latch circuit relative to the sample-to-hold transition of the master latch circuit. The delay enables the flip-flop circuit to better tolerate clock/data timing alignment issues. In a first embodiment, the slave clock signal is delayed relative to the master clock signal. In a second embodiment, the master clock signal buffer is unbalanced such that its duty cycle is skewed to produce unequal sample and hold periods. In a third embodiment, the master latch circuit is unbalanced to create an unequal delay associated with the sampling and holding periods.