Characterization of Asynchronous Templates for Integration into Clocked CAD Flows

Kenneth S. Stevens, Yang Xu, Vikas Vij
2009 2009 15th IEEE Symposium on Asynchronous Circuits and Systems  
Asynchronous circuit design can result in substantial benefits of reduced power, improved performance, and high modularity. However, asynchronous design styles are largely incompatible with clocked CAD, which has prevented wide-scale adoption. The key incompatibility is timing. Thus most commercial work relies on custom CAD or untimed delay-insensitive design methodologies. This paper proposes a new methodology, based on formal verification and relative timing, to create and prove correct
more » ... ary constraints to support asynchronous design with traditional clocked CAD. These constraints support timing driven synthesis, place and route, and behavior and timing validation of fully asynchronous designs using traditional clocked CAD flows. This flow is demonstrated through a simple example pipeline in IBM's 65nm process showing the ability to retarget the design for improved power and performance.
doi:10.1109/async.2009.26 dblp:conf/async/StevensXV09 fatcat:suslhojq5nd3xh3zjx3bq7krga