Clock Gating

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What Does Clock Gating Mean?

Clock gating is a technique that enables the saving of electrical power used by computer processors. It ensures power saving by turning on a functional logic block clock, but only when required.

Clock gating was the mainstay of the Pentium 4 architecture’s power saving modes.

Techopedia Explains Clock Gating

Clock gating works by efficiently utilizing the clock signals on sequential or synchronous circuits, mostly found in computer processors. Typically, clock gating is implemented in the form of integrated clock gating cells. It manages the clock tree in a way that uses less portions of the circuitry, resulting in reduced flip-flop switching. This leads to power saving that is previously incurred by switching flip flop states. It also leads to less die area, as its replaces muxes with clock gating logic.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.

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