Glitch-free clock selector

Details Glitch-free clock selector Glitch-free clock selector

2000-01-07

2001-05-29

Cunningham, Terry D. (Department: 2816)

Miscellaneous active electrical nonlinear devices, circuits, and

Specific signal discriminating without subsequent control

Having selection between plural continuous waveforms

C327S166000, C327S298000, C327S407000, C327S147000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06239626

ABSTRACT:

FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The current invention is directed to an apparatus for selecting a clock from among a plurality of phase and frequency synchronized clocks in a manner which provides a glitch-free clock source to all system components consuming such clock.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
In a high-availability system, there is often an architecture whereby some of the subsystems are in use, and some of the subsystems are provided as a backup to the subsystems that are in use. In this configuration, the subsystems that are in use are referred to as ACTIVE, and the subsystems that are for backup purposes are referred to as STANDBY. In such systems, there is a need to provide a distributed method for the delivery of clocking such that an ACTIVE subsystem that may be sourcing a clock to the entire system can be instantaneously switched over to a subsystem that was previously STANDBY, and now takes over as an ACTIVE system. There is typically a requirement that the clock selection be handled by each subsystem which consumes a system clock, and during the switchover, the clock source that is delivered must be glitch-free. Glitch-free clock transition is required in modern electronic systems because a low frequency clock such as 25 Mhz is typically distributed, and thereafter multiplied with phase lock loops (PLLs) up to frequencies as high as 300 Mhz. Since each clock frequency is typically produced by a different PLL on a single subsystem, and each subsystem is expected to retain synchronism, it is a system requirement that the transition from one system clock to another be phase and frequency coherent. When a PLL encounters an extra input transition, or “glitch”, the PLL will rapidly increase in frequency, then slow back down to track the system frequency. During this interval, synchronization between the present PLL and the other system PLLs is lost, and this causes data transfers from one clock domain to another to be unreliable.
One prior art system involves selecting a clock between two clock sources, and then following the selected clock with a PLL to smooth out edge discontinuities and glitches that may have occurred during the clock source transition. One such system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,260,979 by Parker et al. This type of system works well where there is a single decision point which produces the system clock used by the rest of the system. In applications where the decision point resides on each system card, it is not possible to assure that all of the independent PLLs will track each other at the time of a phase transition following a clock switchover event.
Another prior art system involves the use of three clock oscillators, which self-synchronize to the fastest oscillator and thereafter distribute this signal to the other parts of the system, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,553,231. With this system, when the fastest oscillator is removed, the system frequency quickly changes to a slower frequency.
The system of U.S. Pat. No. 5,502,819 generates two asynchronous clocks and distributes each to a clock select circuit which does not change clock selections until the current clock cycle is complete. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,970,405 and 5,099,140 both similarly blank the new clock until a full cycle of the old clock has completed. This prevents glitches at the point of switchover, but provides for an instantaneous frequency change, since the two clock sources are not locked to each other. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 5,502,409 describes a clock selector which synchronizes a “clock switch” signal to the latter-occurring of the two system clocks before switching to the alternate source. U.S. Pat. No. 5,315,181 describes a circuit for selecting between two clocks whereby the select line is synchronized to an output clock formed from a first and second clock. In this system, if the selected input clock were to fail in the 0 or 1 level, the output clock would stop, and the select line would have no further effect.
OBJECTS OF THE INVENTION
It is desired to have a clock selection circuit which selects between two frequency and phase locked sources without producing output transients. A first object of the invention is the glitch-free selection of a clock source from among a plurality of frequency-locked or phase-locked clocks. A second object of the invention is the selection from a first clock to a second clock in a phase synchronous, frequency synchronous manner. A third object of the invention is a non-revertive clock selection circuit whereby the selection of an active clock is unchanged until the active clock becomes bad while the standby clock is good.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
A plurality of phase and frequency synchronized clock signals are provided to a multiplexer controlled by one or more asynchronous control lines, which are re-timed by a synchronizer with a response time T
syNc
. The multiplexer is controlled by a clock select input, which is generated by the output of an asynchronous state machine. The asynchronous state machine comprises a Set Reset (SR) flip flop which produces this clock select bit. The set input of the flip flop is controlled by a logic function that is only asserted when the currently selected clock is bad and the standby clock is indicated to be good, and the reset input is controlled by a logic function that is only asserted when the currently selected clock is bad and the standby is indicated to be good. The propagation time from a control input of the multiplexer to the output is T
mux
, while the propagation time from a control input to the asynchronous state machine output is T
prop
. These propagation times are constrained to be T
prop
+T
mux
+T
asm
<=T
clk
/2, where T
clk
is the period of the system clock.


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