A reduced clock-swing flip-flop (RCSFF) for 63% power reduction

A reduced clock-swing flip-flop (RCSFF) is proposed, which is composed of a reduced swing clock driver and a special flip-flop which embodies the leakage current cutoff mechanism. The RCSFF can reduce the clock system power of a VLSI down to one-third compared to the conventional flip-flop. This power improvement is achieved through the reduced clock swing down to 1 V. The area and the delay of the RCSFF can also be reduced by a factor of about 20% compared to the conventional flip-flop. The RCSFF can also reduce the RC delay of a long RC interconnect to one-half.