11.5 On-demand, Clock Requests

All the clock sources in the system can be run in an on-demand mode, where the clock source is in a stopped state when no peripherals are requesting the clock source. Clock requests propagate from the peripheral, through the GCLK, to the clock source. If one or more peripheral is using a clock source, the clock source will be started/kept running. As soon as the clock source is no longer needed and no peripheral have an active request the clock source will be stopped until requested again. For the clock request to reach the clock source, the peripheral, the generic clock and the clock from the Generic Clock Generator in-between must be enabled. The time taken from a clock request being asserted to the clock source being ready is dependent on the clock source startup time, clock source frequency as well as the divider used in the Generic Clock Generator. The total startup time from a clock request to the clock is available for the peripheral is given below:


Delay_start_max = Clock source startup time + 2 * clock source periods + 2 * divided clock source periods
Delay_start_min = Clock source startup time + 1 * clock source period + 1 * divided clock source periodDelay_start_min = Clock source startup time + 1 * clock source period + 1 * divided clock source period

The delay for shutting down the clock source when there is no longer an active request is given below:

Delay_stop_min = 1 * divided clock source period + 1 * clock source period
Delay_stop_max = 2 * divided clock source periods + 2 * clock source periods

The On-Demand principle can be disabled individually for each clock source by clearing the ONDEMAND bit located in each clock source controller. The clock is always running whatever is the clock request. This has the effect to remove the clock source startup time at the cost of the power consumption.

In standby mode, the clock request mechanism is still working if the modules are configured to run in Standby mode (RUNSTDBY bit).