VLSI asynchronous systems: specification and synthesis

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Abstract

Most of today's digital systems are realized using synchronous (i.e. globally clocked) VLSI circuits. For many reasons, it is becoming increasingly hard to build large synchronous circuits. Although several techniques for building non-clocked (i.e. asynchronous) sequential circuits have been known for some time, they have been largely ignored by the digital design community. Recently, however, asynchronous circuits have been enjoying a revival. After reviewing recent research in this area, we take a simple collection of examples and, through them, explain our design system for specifying and synthesizing asynchronous circuits. We show that by being able to work in a framework where circuit activities do not have to coincide with clock pulses, designers obtain several avenues for circuit optimization that are highly promising for creating efficient and modularly expandable circuits.

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    1

    Ganesh Gopalakrishnan received an MTech degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, in 1980, and a PhD degree in computer science from the State University of New York, Stony Brook, New York, in 1986. Currently he is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Computer Science, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA. Previously he was a visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary, Canada, for one year, and has spent a summer at the Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ. His interests are in applying formal methods to the design of synchronous and asynchronous VLSI systems, and also in programming languages.

    2

    Venkatesh Akella received an ME degree in electrical communication engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bengalore, India, in 1985 and a PhD degree in computer science from the University of Utah, in 1992. Currently he is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California, Davis, CA, USA. His research interests are in programming languages and VLSI design.

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