Additional Uncertainty - 2021.2 English

UltraFast Design Methodology Guide for Xilinx FPGAs and SoCs

Document ID
UG949
Release Date
2021-11-19
Version
2021.2 English

When you need to add extra margin on the timing paths of a clock or between two clocks, you must use the set_clock_uncertainty command. This is also the best and safest way to over-constrain a portion of a design without modifying the actual clock edges and the overall clocks relationships. The clock uncertainty defined by you is additive to the jitter computed by the Vivado tools, and can be specified separately for setup and hold analysis.

For example, the margin on all intra-clock paths of the design clock clk0 needs to be tightened by 500 ps to make the design more robust to noise for both setup and hold:

set_clock_uncertainty -from clk0 -to clk0 0.500
Note: Tightening the hold margin on a design can lead to hold violations on dedicated intra-site and cascade paths that the router cannot fix by detouring the intra-site net.

If you specify additional uncertainty between two clocks, the constraint must be applied in both directions (assuming data flows in both directions). The example below shows how to increase the uncertainty by 250 ps between clk0 and clk1 for setup only:

set_clock_uncertainty -from clk0 -to clk1 0.250 -setup
set_clock_uncertainty -from clk1 -to clk0 0.250 -setup