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Precision Timing Analysis for High-Frequency Designs
Synopsys PrimeClock is the latest innovation in the Synopsys PrimeTime family of products, purpose-built to address the increasing challenges of clock jitter and structural integrity in today’s high-frequency semiconductor designs. As chip frequencies climb beyond 2GHz and into the 4-5GHz range, even the smallest margins in clock jitter can have a significant impact on design performance and yield. PrimeClock empowers design teams to scientifically analyze, optimize, and recover performance margins that were previously unattainable with conventional methods.
The Challenge
Modern, high-speed designs—common in mobile CPUs, high-performance computing (HPC), and advanced automotive applications—are pushing the limits of clock frequency and operating at ever-lower voltages. Existing approaches to managing clock jitter and integrity, such as setting margins based on historical data or performing limited SPICE simulations, fall short when applied to billion-instance designs. This leaves teams without a practical, scalable solution to quantify and optimize clock network performance.
Key Benefits
PrimeClock delivers a breakthrough approach to timing analysis by:
- Quantifying Clock Jitter: Provides detailed measurements of clock jitter across the entire chip or at specific points in the design, enabling users to update constraints and recover valuable frequency margins.
- Optimizing Clock Network Integrity: Evaluates rail-to-rail swings and duty cycles, detecting dead pulses and timing escapes to improve structural reliability and overall circuit yield.
- Advanced Analysis Flows: Integrates seamlessly as an extension of PrimeTime, leveraging session databases and efficient partitioning for full-chip, subsystem, or block-level analysis.
- Machine Learning-Driven Coverage: Uses ML models to expand analysis coverage from a handful of cycles to thousands, overcoming traditional compute limitations.
- Aging and Stress Simulation: Simulates circuit behavior under various aging and stress conditions, helping users anticipate long-term performance degradation.
- Resource Efficiency: Delivers up to 100x–1000x speed improvements over traditional SPICE, and 2x–5x faster than niche competitive tools, with optimal compute usage thanks to advanced pruning and modeling technology.
- Trusted Foundations: Built upon foundry-certified, customer-trusted PrimeTime and PrimeSim tools.
Resources
What's New
Solving Clock Signal Integrity and Jitter Issues
Learn how PrimeClock is used for dedicated clock integrity and jitter analysis.
The Design Challenges of Clock Integrity and Clock Jitter
Discover how to solve clock integrity and jitter challenges in high-speed chip design.
SNUG Silicon Valley 2026 Proceedings
Check out how Arm and Socionext used Synopsys PrimeClock. Download the SNUG Silicon Valley 2026 Proceedings.