Work out clock skew budget instantly with clear inputs, formula shown and shareable results.
Clock uncertainty — skew plus jitter — comes directly off the cycle time available to logic. Skew targets are typically 2-5% of the period, so at 500 MHz that is 40-100 ps, and every picosecond of uncertainty is a picosecond of logic depth lost.
Clock budget
uncertainty = skew + jitter; usable cycle = period - uncertainty
Perfectly balanced clock trees cost enormous buffer count and power. A small deliberate skew can even help by borrowing time between pipeline stages.
No, it hurts both. Skew subtracts from setup slack on one path and from hold slack on another, which is why balanced trees matter for both checks.