No abstract

Dynamic logic requires some sort of keeper to prevent the output node from floating and to provide acceptable noise immunity. A number of recent papers have advocated using a very weak complementary pMOS network in place of the conventional feedback keeper; such a technique is called Noise-Tolerant Precharge (NTP). This paper compares the delay and noise margin of NTP with conventional feedback keepers. Although NTP is more robust in that it can recover from a dynamic noise event, it is also 5-50% slower than conventional feedback keepers with the same static noise margin.