Why is rising edge preferred over falling edge

hr0m picture hr0m · Dec 19, 2013 · Viewed 8.6k times · Source

Flip-Flops(,Registers ...) are usually triggered by a rising or falling edge. But mostly in code you see an if-clause which uses the rising edge triggering. In fact i never saw a code with falling edge.

Why is that? Is it because naturally the programmers use rising edge, because they are used to, or is it because of some physical/analog law/fact, where the rising edge programming is faster/simpler/energy-efficient/... ?

Answer

Martin Thompson picture Martin Thompson · Dec 19, 2013

As zennehoy says, it's convention - but one going back to when logic was done in discrete chips with a few gates or flipflops within them. Those packages of flipflops were always rising-edge triggered...as far as I recall, but maybe someone with better recollection of the yellow books will correct me!

The TI Logic databooks

So when synthesis came along, no doubt everyone felt comfortable carrying on that way!