Almost each library has enable flip-flops included. Unfortunately, they are not always used to their full potential. We will explore some of their potential in this post.
An enable flop is nothing but a regular flop which only registers new data if the enable signal is high, otherwise it keeps the old value. We normally implement this using a MUX and a feedback from the flop’s output as depicted below.
So what is the big deal about it? The nice thing is that the enable flop is already implemented by the guys who built the library in a very optimized way. Usually implementing this with a MUX before the flop will eat away from the cycle time you could otherwise use for your logic. However, a short glance at your library will prove that this MUX comes almost for free when you use an enable flop (for my current library the cost is 20ps).
So how can we use this to our advantage?
Example #1 – Soft reset coding
In many applications soft reset is a necessity. It is a signal usually driven by a register that will (soft) reset all flip flops given that a clock is running. Many times an enable “if” is also used in conjunction.
This is usually coded in this way (I use Verilog pseudo syntax and ask the forgiveness of you VHDL people):
always @(posedge clk or negedge hard_rst)
if (!hard_rst)
ff <= 1'b0;
else if (!soft_rst)
ff <= 1'b0;
else if (en)
ff <= D;
The above code usually results in the construction given in the picture below. The red arrow represents the critical timing path through a MUX and the AND gate that was generated for the soft reset.
Now, if we could only exchange the order of the last two “if” commands this would put the MUX in front of the AND gate and then we could use an enable flop… well, if we do that, it will not be logically equivalent anymore. Thinking about it a bit harder, we could use a trick – let’s exchange the MUX and the AND gate but during soft reset we could force the select pin of the MUX to be “1″, and thus transferring a “0″ to the flop! Here’s the result in a picture form.
We can now use an enable flop and we basically got the MUX delay almost for free. This may look a bit petty to you, but this trick can save you a few extra precious tens or hundreds of pico-seconds.
Example #2 – Toggle Flip Flops
Toggle flops are really neat, and there are many cool ways to use them. The normal implementation requires an XOR gate combining the T input and a feedback of the flop itself.
Let’s have a closer look at the logical implementation of an XOR gate and how it is related to a MUX implementation: (a) is a MUX gate equivalent implementation (b) is an XOR gate equivalent implementation and (c) is an XOR implemented from a MUX.
Now, let’s try making a T flop using an enable flop. We saw already how to change the MUX into an XOR gate – all that is left, is to put everything together.
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