Clock-Gating Inference: Reports & Metrics

Reports and metrics

Reports & Metrics for Clock-Gating Inference focuses on clock-gating insertion rate, gating check violations, clock power delta. The goal is to connect observed QoR movement to mechanism, ownership, and regression risk.

A report is useful only when it supports decisions. For Clock-Gating Inference, read metric movement with baseline context and expected budget.

Metric movement

QOR TREND — Clock-Gating Inference

metric quality
  ^
  |                      target band
  |                o  o  o
  |            o
  |      o  regression
  +----------------------------------> synthesis iteration
   baseline    tuning     signoff-ready

Track: clock-gating insertion rate, gating check violations, clock power delta

• Track clock-gating insertion rate, gating check violations, clock power delta with exact run manifests.

• Keep timing/area/power side-by-side in review dashboards.

• Require one-sentence mechanism hypothesis for every major delta.

• Store before/after artifacts with owner signoff.

Synthesis deep dive

Constraint hygiene determines whether synthesis QoR is trustworthy.

Concept diagram

CONSTRAINT FLOW

RTL intent -> synthesis SDC -> compile checks -> QoR dashboard -> review gate

Metric graph

QOR HEALTH

constraint lint pass   ███████████████
unconstrained count    ███
policy violations      ██

Reports and artifacts

• compile QoR

• unconstrained endpoints

• constraint lint

• policy audit log

Mini case study

Nightly WNS improved but unconstrained paths jumped; strict SDC lint restored true QoR picture.

Debug branches

• Diff SDC first

• Audit dont_touch scope

• Track unconstrained trend weekly

Senior review question

Ask: what evidence proves this QoR move is real and stable?

Key takeaways

• State exact run context (RTL, SDC, libs, switches) with every QoR claim.

• Re-run timing, area, and power regressions after each synthesis ECO.

Common pitfalls

• Comparing runs with mismatched constraints or library views.

• Timing-only fixes that violate power or area budgets.

• Skipping equivalence checks after structural changes.

Report reading lens