Abstract-This paper describes a new target component set and synthesis scheme for the Balsa asynchronous hardware description language. This new scheme removes the reliance on precise handshake interleaving and enclosure by separating out control 'go' and 'done' signalling into separate channels rather than using different phases of the asynchronous handshake. This leads to circuits in which optimisation and control overhead mitigation can be carried out by merging/separating control and data channels and by introducing handshake-decoupling latches. This work aims to make Balsa descriptions implementable in the more widely used and understood higher performance token-based asynchronous circuit styles.
The development of robust and efficient synthesis tools is important if asynchronous design is to gain more widespread acceptance. Syntax-directed translation is a powerful synthesis paradigm that compiles transparently a system specification written in a high-level language into a network of pre-designed handshaking modules. The transparency is provided by a one-to-one mapping from language constructs to the module networks that implement them. This gives the designer flexibility, at the language level, to optimise the resulting circuit in terms of performance, area or power.This paper introduces new techniques that exploit this flexibility to improve the performance of synthesised asynchronous systems. The results of a series of transistor level simulations show that these techniques, combined with optimised handshake module implementations, can produce close to a ten-fold improvement in the performance of a 32-bit, ARM-compatible, asynchronous processor used in an experimental smartcard SoC, without introducing any changes to the original processor architecture.
Abstract-The syntax-directed synthesis paradigm has shown to be a powerful synthesis approach. However, its control-driven nature results in significant performance overhead. Some methods to reduce this overhead include peephole optimisations, control resynthesis and component optimisations. This work explores new methods of improving the performance of syntax-directed synthesised asynchronous circuits, using the Balsa synthesis system as the research framework. This includes investigating description styles and the usage of language constructs that exploit the directness of the synthesis method to obtain more concurrent and faster circuits. The techniques and optimisations presented here has been tested in a set of non-trivial examples including a 32-bit processor, a Viterbi decoder, and a channel-sliced wormhole router.
Abstract-The implementation of an efficient result forwarding unit for asynchronous processors faces the problem of the inherent lack of synchronisation between result producer and consumer units. An efficient, full-custom solution to this problem has been proposed and implemented before (in the AMULET3 asynchronous processor) with the consequent limitations on design-space exploration and technology portability. The use of automatic synthesis to describe asynchronous systems is attractive in terms of rapid development, technology mapping transparency and design space exploration. This paper presents the description of a synthesisable result forwarding unit for an asynchronous microprocessor, using the syntax-directed synthesis approach and targeting a robust quasi-delay-insensitive implementation. The description of such a system also serves as a complex case study to evaluate the capabilities and limitations of syntax-directed synthesis when used as a tool to automate the synthesis of performancedemanding asynchronous systems.
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