How do you avoid setup and hold time violations?

Answer 1

To avoid setup time violations:

• The combinational logic between the flip-flops should be optimized to get minimum delay.
• Redesign the flip-flops to get lesser setup time.
• Tweak launch flip-flop to have better slew at the clock pin, this will make launch flip-flop to be fast there by helping fixing setup violations.
• Play with clock skew (useful skews).

To avoid hold time violations:

• By adding delays (using buffers).

One can add lockup-latches (in cases where the hold time requirement is very huge, basically to avoid data slip).