FPGA-FAQ    0023

Clocking RAMs and Flip Flops





Vendor Xilinx XC4000 families, Spartan, Spartan II, Virtex
FAQ Entry Author Jan Gray
FAQ Entry Editor Philip Freidin
FAQ Entry Date 2001/06/17

Q. Tell me about clocking RAMs and Flip Flops in the same CLBs

A. 

1. In the XC4000-derived architectures, the LUT RAM and the FFs-or-latches have independent clock inversions, so within a single CLB you can write into the RAMs on the clock rising edge and capture or latch the RAM outputs on the falling edge.  No such luck in Virtex-derived architectures including Spartan-II.  There, there is only a common clock inversion for both LUT RAM and FFs, and if you write into the RAMs on a rising edge, you can only clock the FFs on the rising edge, and (as far as latches) they close on the rising edge too.  So you can't clock the FFs/latches on the other edge as with xr16 on XC4000.  If you want to, you have to put the FFs/latches in another column of CLBs, and the extra interconnect delays hurt.

2. There was a serious, glaring bug in the Xilinx tools for Virtex with respect to clock inversion between the LUT RAM and the FFs/latches, which led good-intentioned designers down a garden path.  Read all about it here:

Read about it the archive.

Jan Gray, Gray Research LLC
 

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