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Do setup time and hold time of a register directly affect the minimum clock signal?

milly
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    Hello and welcome. You'll get the best out of EE.SE if you put as much context as you can. And most especially for academic-sounding questions, you'll get the best help if you show what you've tried and where you're stuck. For this particular question, you'll find that drawing out the timing diagram will lead you to your answer. – jonathanjo Jul 07 '23 at 10:28

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When you say minimum clock signal, I assume you mean the minimum clock period (maximum frequency)?

The answer is yes. Ignoring all other effects (slew rate, ringing, jitter) and things like design margin, the minimum clock period is the sum of the setup and hold times.

So if the setup and hold times are both 1 ns (max), then the minimum clock period is 2 ns, or a frequency of 500 MHz.

Note that no good engineer would design a system with these parameters.

SteveSh
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