Abstract
Asynchronous or self-timed systems that do not rely on a global clock to keep system components synchronized can offer significant advantages over traditional clocked circuits in a variety of applications. In order to ease the complexity of this style of design, however, suitable self-timed circuit primitives must be available to the system designer. This article describes a technique for building self-timed circuits and systems using a library of circuit primitives implemented using Actel field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The library modules use a two-phase transition signaling protocol for control signals and a bundled protocol for data signals. A first-in first-out (FIFO) buffer and a simple routing chip are presented as examples of building self-timed circuits using FPGAs.
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This work was supported in part by NSF award MIP-9111793.
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Brunvand, E. Using FPGAs to implement self-timed systems. J VLSI Sign Process Syst Sign Image Video Technol 6, 173–190 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01607880
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01607880