Dynamic gates use clock for their normal operation as opposed to the static gates, which don’t use clocks.
Dynamic gates use NMOS or PMOS logic. It doesn’t use CMOS logic like regular static gates. Because it uses either NMOS or PMOS logic and not CMOS logic, it usually has fewer transistors compared to static gates. Although there are extra transistors given that it uses clocks.
Figure : NMOS pull down logic for NOR gate.
The figure shows the pull down NMOS logic for a NOR gate. This pull down structure is used in the dynamic gates.
How dynamic gates work :
In static gates, inputs switch and after a finite input to output delay, output possibly switches to the expected state.
Figure : Dynamic NOR gate.
As you can see in the figure above, dynamic gate is made using NMOS pull down logic along with clock transistors on both pull up and pull down paths.
We know that clock has two phases, the low phase and the high phase. Dynamic gate has two operating phases based on the clock phases. During the low clock phase, because of the pmos gate on the pull up network, the output of dynamic gate is pre-charged to high phase. This is the pre-charge state of dynamic gate.
When the clock is at high phase, the output of dynamic gate may change based on the inputs, or it may stay pre-charged depending on the input. The phase of the dynamic gates, when the clock is high, is called the evaluate phase. As it is essentially evaluating what the output should be during this phase.
Figure : Dynamic NOR waveforms when input ‘A’ is high.
As seen in the waveforms above, as soon as CLK goes low, it pre-charges output node ‘Out’ high. While in the pre-charge state, NOR input ‘A’ goes high. When CLK goes high, and evaluation phase begins, ‘Out’ is discharged to low as input ‘A’ is high. Input ‘B’ is not shown in the waveform as it is not relevant to this case.
If both inputs ‘A’ and ‘B’ were to remain low, output node would be held high during the pre-charge.
This technique of always priming or pre-charging output to be with, is a way to minimize switching of the output node, because if with a new set of inputs, output was supposed to be high, it wouldn’t have to switch, as it is already pre-charged. Output only has to switch in the case where it has to be low.
But obviously such reduction in output switching doesn’t come free, as it means introducing the clocks and the extra pre-charge face, where output is not ready to be sampled.
One of the biggest concerns with dynamic gates, is the crowbar current. It needs to be ensured that the clock input to the pull up and pull down is the same node, because of pull up and pull down clocks are coming from different sources, there is a higher likelihood of both pull up and pull down transistors to be on at the same time and hence the crowbar current.
Dynamic gates burn more power because of the associated clocks. Clock signal switches continuously, hence there is more dynamic power dissipated.