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Ping-Ki Tsang. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 87-95). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Acknowledgments --- p.iii / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Motivation and Aims --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Contributions --- p.3 / Chapter 1.3 --- Overview of the Thesis --- p.4 / Chapter 2 --- Asynchronous Logic g --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1 --- Motivation --- p.6 / Chapter 2.2 --- Timing Models --- p.9 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- Fundamental-Mode Model --- p.9 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- Delay-Insensitive Model --- p.10 / Chapter 2.2.3 --- QDI and Speed-Independent Models --- p.11 / Chapter 2.3 --- Asynchronous Signalling Protocols --- p.12 / Chapter 2.3.1 --- 2-phase Handshaking Protocol --- p.12 / Chapter 2.3.2 --- 4-phase Handshaking Protocol --- p.13 / Chapter 2.4 --- Data Representations --- p.14 / Chapter 2.4.1 --- Dual Rail Coded Data --- p.15 / Chapter 2.4.2 --- Bundled Data --- p.15 / Chapter 2.5 --- Previous Asynchronous Processors --- p.16 / Chapter 2.6 --- Summary --- p.20 / Chapter 3 --- The MSL16 Architecture --- p.21 / Chapter 3.1 --- RISC Machines --- p.21 / Chapter 3.2 --- Stack Machines --- p.23 / Chapter 3.3 --- Forth and its Applications --- p.24 / Chapter 3.4 --- MSL16 --- p.26 / Chapter 3.4.1 --- Architecture --- p.28 / Chapter 3.4.2 --- Instruction Set --- p.30 / Chapter 3.4.3 --- The Datapath --- p.32 / Chapter 3.4.4 --- Interrupts and Exceptions --- p.33 / Chapter 3.4.5 --- Implementing Forth primitives --- p.34 / Chapter 3.4.6 --- Code Density Estimation --- p.34 / Chapter 3.5 --- Summary --- p.35 / Chapter 4 --- Design Methodology --- p.37 / Chapter 4.1 --- Basic Notation --- p.38 / Chapter 4.2 --- Specification of MSL16A --- p.39 / Chapter 4.3 --- Decomposition into Concurrent Processes --- p.41 / Chapter 4.4 --- Separation of Control and Datapath --- p.45 / Chapter 4.5 --- Handshaking Expansion --- p.45 / Chapter 4.5.1 --- 4-Phase Handshaking Protocol --- p.46 / Chapter 4.6 --- Production-rule Expansion --- p.47 / Chapter 4.7 --- Summary --- p.48 / Chapter 5 --- Implementation --- p.49 / Chapter 5.1 --- C-element --- p.49 / Chapter 5.2 --- Mutual Exclusion Elements --- p.51 / Chapter 5.3 --- Caltech Asynchronous Synthesis Tools --- p.53 / Chapter 5.4 --- Stack Design --- p.54 / Chapter 5.4.1 --- Eager Stack Control --- p.55 / Chapter 5.4.2 --- Lazy Stack Control --- p.56 / Chapter 5.4.3 --- Eager/Lazy Stack Datapath --- p.53 / Chapter 5.4.4 --- Pointer Stack Control --- p.61 / Chapter 5.4.5 --- Pointer Stack Datapath --- p.62 / Chapter 5.5 --- ALU Design --- p.62 / Chapter 5.5.1 --- The Addition Operation --- p.63 / Chapter 5.5.2 --- Zero-Checker --- p.64 / Chapter 5.6 --- Memory Interface and Tri-state Buffers --- p.64 / Chapter 5.7 --- MSL16A --- p.65 / Chapter 5.8 --- Summary --- p.66 / Chapter 6 --- Results --- p.67 / Chapter 6.1 --- FPGA based implementation of MSL16 --- p.67 / Chapter 6.2 --- MSL16A --- p.69 / Chapter 6.2.1 --- A Comparison of 3 Stack Designs --- p.69 / Chapter 6.2.2 --- Evaluation of the ALU --- p.73 / Chapter 6.2.3 --- Evaluation of MSL16A --- p.74 / Chapter 6.3 --- Summary --- p.81 / Chapter 7 --- Conclusions --- p.83 / Chapter 7.1 --- Future Work --- p.85 / Bibliography --- p.87 / Publications --- p.95

In modern integrated circuits, one way to reduce power consumption is to turn off power to parts of the circuit when those are idle. This method is called power gating. This thesis presents a state-preserving technique to achieve power savings in GasP family of asynchronous circuits by turning off the power when the circuit is idle. The power control logic turns on the power in anticipation of the receiving data. The power control logic turns off the power when the stage is idle either because it is empty or because the pipeline is clogged. The low logical effort of GasP circuits makes just-in-time power gating possible on a stage-by-stage basis. A new latch called Lazy Latch is introduced in this thesis. The lazy latch preserves its output and permits power gating of its larger transistors. The lazy latch is power efficient because it drives strongly only when necessary. A new latch called Blended Latch is proposed in this thesis which blends the advantages of the Conventional latches and the Lazy latches. Performance of power gating is evaluated by comparing the power-gated pipeline against the non-power gated pipeline. Power savings achieved are dependent on the duty cycle of operation. The fact that just-in-time power gating achieves power savings after it is idle for a minimum of 106 cycles makes it useful in limited applications where a quick start is required after long idle times.

A novel microarchitecture and circuit design techniques are presented for an asynchronous datapath that not only exhibits an extremely high rate of performance, but is also energy efficient. A 0.5 um chip was fabricated and tested that contains test circuits for the asynchronous datapath. Results show an adder and multiplier design that due to the 2-dimensional bit pipelining techniques, speculative completion, dynamic asynchronous circuits, and bit-level reservation stations and reorder buffers can commit 16-bit additions and multiplications at 1 giga operation per second (GOPS). The synchronicity simulator is also shown that simulates the same architecture except at more modern transistor nodes showing adder and multiplier performances at up to 11.1 GOPS in a commerically available 65 nm process. When compared to other designs and results, these prove to be some of the fastest if not the fastest adders and multipliers to date. The chip technology also was tested down to supply voltages below threshold making it extremely energy efficient. The asynchronous architecture also allows more exotic technologies, which are presented. Learning digital circuits are presented whereby the current supplied to a digital gate can be dynamically updated with floating gate technology. Probabilistic digital signal processing is also presented where the probabilistic operation is due to the statistical delay through the asynchronous circuits. Results show successful image processing with probabilistic operation in the least significant bits of the datapath resulting in large performance and energy gains.

Einstein's relativity theory tells us that the notion of simultaneity can only be approximated for events distributed over space. As a result, the use of asynchronous techniques is unavoidable in systems larger than a certain physical size. Traditional design techniques that use global clocks face this barrier of scale already within the space of a modern microprocessor chip. The most common response by the chip industry for overcoming this barrier is to use Globally Asynchronous Locally Synchronous (GALS) design techniques. The circuits investigated in this thesis can be viewed as examples of GALS design. To make such designs trustworthy it is necessary to model formally the relative signal delays and timing requirements that make these designs work correctly. With trustworthy asynchrony one can build reliable, large, and scalable systems, and exploit the lower power and higher speed features of asynchrony. This research presents ARCtimer, a framework for modeling, generating, verifying, and enforcing timing constraints for individual self-timed handshake components that use bounded-bundled-data handshake protocols. The constraints guarantee that the component's gate-level circuit implementation obeys the component's handshake protocol specification. Because the handshake protocols are delay insensitive, self-timed systems built using ARCtimer-verified components can be made delay insensitive. Any delay sensitivity inside a component is detected and repaired by ARCtimer. In short: by carefully considering time locally, we can ignore time globally. ARCtimer applies early in the design process as part of building a library of verified components for later system use. The library also stores static timing analysis (STA) code to validate and enforce the component's constraints in any self-timed system built using the library. The library descriptions of a handshake component's circuit, protocol, timing constraints, and STA code are robust to circuit modifications applied later in the design process by technology mapping or layout tools. New contributions of ARCtimer include: 1. Upfront modeling on a component by component basis to reduce the validation effort required to (a) reimplement components in different technologies, (b) assemble components into systems, and (c) guarantee system-level timing closure. 2. Modeling of bounded-bundled-data timing constraints that permit the control signals to lead or lag behind data signals to optimize system timing.

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Globally Asynchronous Locally Synchronous (GALS) Design ist eine Lösung zur Skalierbarkeit und Modularität für die SoC-Integration. Heutzutage ist GALS-Design weit in der Industrie angewendet. Die meisten GALS-Systeme basieren auf Dual-Clock-FIFOs für die Kommunikation Zwischen Taktdomänen. Um Leistungsverluste aufgrund der Synchronisationslatenzzeit zu vermindern, müssen die On-Chip-FIFOs ausreichend groß sein. Dies führt jedoch oft zu erheblichen Kosten-Hardware. Effiziente GALS- Lösungen sind daher vonnöten. Diese Arbeit berichtet unsere neuesten Fortschritte in GALS Design, das auf der Pausierenden Taktung basiert. Kritische Designthemen in Bezug auf Synchronisation-szuverlässigkeit bzw. Kommunikationsfähigkeit sind systematisch und analytisch un-tersucht. Ein lose gekoppeltes GALS Data-Link-Design wird vorgeschlagen. Es unter-stützt metastabilitätsfreie Synchronisation für Sub-Takt-Baum Verzögerungen. Außer-dem unterstützt es kontinuierliche Datenübertragung für High-Throughput-Kommuni-kation. Die Rosten hinsichtlich Energie verbrauch und Chipfläche sind marginal. GALS Design ist eingesetzt, um digitales On-Chip Umschaltrauschen zu verringern. Plesiochron Taktung mit balanciertem Leistungsverbrauch zwischen GALS Blöcken wird insbesondere untersucht. Für M Taktbereiche wird eine Reduzierung um 20lgM dB für die spektralen Spitzen des Versorgungsstroms bei der Takt-Grundfrequenz theoretisch hergcleitet. Im Vergleich zu den bestehenden synchronen Lösungen, geben diese Methode eine Alternative, um das digitale schaltrauschen effektiv zu senken. Schließlich wurde die entwickelte GALS Design Methodik schon bei reale Chip-Implementierungen angewendet. Zwei komplizierte industriell relevante Test-Chips, Lighthouse und Moonrake, wurden entworfen und mit State-Of-The-Art-Technologien hergestellt. Die experimentellen Ergebnisse bzw. / Globally asynchronous locally synchronous (GALS) design presents a solution of scalability and modularity to SoC integration. Today, it has been widely applied in the industry. Most of the GALS systems are based on dual-clock FIFOs for clock domain crossing. To avoid performance loss due to synchronization latency, the on-chip FIFOs need to be sufficiently large. This, however, often leads to considerable hardware costs. Efficient design solutions of GALS are therefore in great demand. This thesis reports our latest progress in GALS design bases on pausible clocking. Critical design issues on synchronization reliability and communication performance are studied systematically and analytically. A loosely-coupled GALS data-link design is proposed. It supports metastability-free synchronization for sub-cycle clock-tree delay, and accommodates continuous data transfer for high-throughput communication. Only marginal costs of power and silicon area are required. GALS design has been employed to cope with the on-chip digital switching noise in our work. Plesiochronous clocking with power-consumption balance between GALS blocks is in particular explored. Given M clock domains, a reduction of 20lgM dB on the spectral peaks of supply current at the fundamental clock frequency is theoretically derived. In comparison with the existing synchronous design solutions, it thus presents an alternative to effective attenuation of digital switching noise. The developed GALS design methodology has been applied to chip implementation. Two complicated industry-relevant test chips, named Lighthouse and Moonrake, were designed and fabricated using state-of-the-art technologies. The experimental results as well as the on-chip measurements are reported here in detail. We expect that, our work will contribute to the practical applications of GALS design based on pausible clocking in the industry.

Afin de suivre le rythme effréné des évolutions des systèmes embarqués et des dispositifs portables, il s’avère aujourd’hui indispensable d’optimiser la gestion de l’énergie sans pour autant compromettre la performance et la robustesse des circuits. Dans ce contexte, cette thèse étudie de nouveaux dispositifs de gestion de l’énergie ainsi que leur mise en œuvre, en combinant deux approches: la logique asynchrone et les techniques de polarisation du substrat (Adaptive Body Biasing - ABB). Cette thèse comporte quatre contributions permettant la conception de circuits asynchrones énergétiquement plus efficaces. 1) Une unité arithmétique et logique (UAL) asynchrone quasi insensible aux délais (Quasi Delay Insensitive - QDI) a été conçue et utilisée pour mener une analyse comparative entre systèmes synchrones et asynchrones. Cette étude démontre notamment  la meilleure efficacité énergétique et la plus grande robustesse des circuits asynchrones QDI, surtout lorsqu’ils fonctionnent à basse tension. 2) Une cellule standard a été spécialement développée pour mettre en œuvre nos schémas d’adaptation dynamique du substrat (ABB) qui ajustent la tension de seuil (Vth) des transistors. En outre, cette cellule s’est révélée très utile pour la détection de fautes transitoires causées par des radiations environnementales. Cette cellule est en outre un élément clé pour exploiter la polarisation du substrat, un des intérêts majeurs de la technologie FD-SOI, et d’améliorer la fiabilité du système. 3) Trois stratégies de polarisation de substrat ont été évaluées. Ces stratégies reposent sur la détection automatique de l’activité des circuits asynchrones QDI et de la polarisation de multiples domaines dans le substrat (Body Biasing Domains - BBD). De plus, une méthode pour analyser l’efficacité énergétique des stratégies de polarisation pour les circuits asynchrones QDI a également été proposée dans le cadre de cette thèse. 4) Enfin, un flot de conception de circuits numériques intégrés a été proposé et développé. Ce flot, basé sur des cellules standards, permet d’exploiter des stratégies de polarisation (ABB) avec plusieurs domaines (BBD) en utilisant la cellule standard spécialement développée. Un testchip a été conçu et fabriqué pour valider notre flot de conception et évaluer l’efficacité de la cellule proposée. / Keeping the fast evolving pace of embedded systems of portable devices require ameliorations of power management techniques, without compromising the circuit performance and robustness. In this context, this thesis studies novel energy management schemes, and how to implement them, by using two main design approaches: asynchronous logic and adaptive body biasing (ABB) techniques. Four main contributions have been done, thus enabling the design of more energy efficient asynchronous circuits. 1) We contributed with the design of a Quasi-delay Insensitive (QDI) asynchronous ALU architecture, used in a comparative analysis of asynchronous versus synchronous systems. This first study has demonstrated the energy efficiency and robustness of QDI circuits, especially if operating at low power supply (Vdd ). 2) We proposed a new body built-in cell for implementing ABB schemes by tuning the circuit threshold voltage (Vth) on-the-fly; and detecting short-duration and long-duration transient faults (TF) caused by environmental radiation. The proposed cell is a key building block to fully benefit from body biasing features of the FD-SOI technology while enhancing system’s reliability. 3) We assessed three different ABB strategies - based on automatic activity detection and multiple body-biasing domains (BBDs) - for QDI asynchronous circuits. Furthermore, a methodology for analyzing energy efficiency of ABB strategies in QDI asynchronous circuits is also proposed in this work. 4) We developed a standard cell-based IC design flow to apply ABB strategies with multiple BBDs by using the proposed body built-in cells. A testchip has been designed and fabricated to validate the developed design flow and the efficacy of the body built-in cell.

Bibliography :p.269-285. / xxii, 285 p. : ill. ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Describes a new method for describing asynchronous systems (free-flow asynchronism). The method is demonstrated through two applications ; a channel signalling system and amedo. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, 1998

Os circuitos integrados recentes baseados em tecnologias nanoeletrônicas estão significativamente mais vulneráveis a falhas transientes. Os erros gerados são assim também mais críticos do que eram antes. Esta tese apresenta uma nova virtude em termos de confiabilidade dos circuitos assíncronos quase-insensíveis aos atrasos (QDI): a sua grande habilidade natural para mitigar falhas transientes de longa duração, que são severas em circuitos síncronos modernos. Uma metodologia para avaliar comparativamente os efeitos de falhas transientes tanto em circuitos síncronos como em circuitos assíncronos QDI é apresentada. Além disso, um método para obter a habilidade de mitigação de falhas transientes dos elementos de memória de circuitos QDI (ou seja, os C-elements) é também proposto. Por fim, técnicas de mitigação são sugeridas para aumentar ainda mais a atenuação de falhas transientes por parte dos Celements e, por consequência, também a robustez dos sistemas assíncronos QDI. / Recent deep-submicron technology-based ICs are significantly more vulnerable to transient faults. The arisen errors are thus also more critical than they have ever been before. This thesis presents a further novel benefit of the Quasi-Delay Insensitive (QDI) asynchronous circuits in terms of reliability: their strong natural ability to mitigate longduration transient faults that are severe in modern synchronous circuits. A methodology to evaluate comparatively the transient-fault effects on synchronous and QDI asynchronous circuits is presented. Furthermore, a method to obtain the transient-fault mitigation ability of the QDI circuits’ memory elements (i.e., the C-elements) is also proposed. Finally, mitigation techniques are suggested to increase even more the Celements’ transient-fault attenuation, and thus also the QDI asynchronous systems’ robustness.