Technique for efficiently managing both short-term and long-term frequency adjustments of an electronic circuit clock signal

摘要

A control system for generating an electronic circuit clock signal that can optimize operating frequency margins by responding to short term effects by quickly varying the clock frequency and long term effects by finding an optimal frequency point. A sensor indicates frequency margins associated with safe use of the clock signal, and these frequency margins are input into a frequency compensator and used to determine whether the system is operating within acceptable margins, or alternatively to modify the operating clock frequency on a short-term basis in order to achieve acceptable operating margins. The requests for frequency adjustment by the frequency compensator are provided to a frequency filter, which combines such request with a maintained/accumulated history of previous short-term frequency requests that have previously been made in order to determine whether an update needs to be made to the target frequency to provide long-term frequency control.