[time-nuts] Gate propagation delay jitter

[Dr Bruce Griffiths]

Hal Murray wrote:
>> I would like to know what are the common methods of introducing 
>> delays as low as 10ps between two outputs in an FPGA. I do not 
>>     
>
> I'd try to make the delays within the FPGA the same and then tweak the 
> external trace lengths.  At that level of detail, you will have to pay 
> attention to the lengths of the package traces.
>
>
> Most of the discussion was jitter rather than delay/offset.  I'd expect a lot 
> of troubles trying to get low jitter out of a FPGA unless you dedicate the 
> whole chip to this particular task.  If anything else is going on it will be 
> hard to keep the power supply super clean.  It might be fun to measure.  It 
> would be interesting to see how much jitter action on the other side of the 
> chip adds.
>
> One of the wizards on the fpga newsgroup has a war story about clock jitter 
> due to outputs near the clock input switching.  I forget the details.  It may 
> have been a single ended clock input.
>
>
>  
>
>   
Hal

Yes ground bounce can play havoc with the effective switching thresholds.
One would expect this effect to be much worse with single ended clocks.

Bruce