Introduction About Asynchronous Integrated Circuits Design

Published:2011/3/2 2:31:00 Author:LiuQiaoyan From:SeekIC

Synchronous integrated circuits are integrated semiconductors that arranged according to the globally distributed periodical time control signals called clocks . This kind of design have brought about extraordinary advancement in the semiconductor industry by improving in the form of chip density and speed . According to Moore’s law , the transistors grows twice in number every two years , and the requirements for great complexity and downsizing are increasing . Many problems such as switching delay , clock distribution and complexity management appear as the trade pursues these factors , which made the design challenged .
These worries and some others reasons have caused the renaissance of asynchronous , circuits that sequenced without global clocks . Compared with their synchronous rivals , the asynchronous circuits do have the advantage of flexibility in design , reduction of cost , average case performance , separation of timing from correctness , less power consumption and elimination of clock skewness .
Asynchronous circuit design is not fresh news both in theory and practice . It has been studied since the early 1940’s when the focus was mainly on vacuum tube and mechanical relay , this resulted to two major theoretical models in the 1950’s . From then on , the asynchronous circuit moved forward successfully , however , it was replaced by synchronous circuits because of some problems at last . Since then ,the synchronous design has emerged as the popular design style with almost all the third generation computers based on synchronous system timing . Though the asynchronous circuits is not so popular in the mainstream commercial chip production , asynchronous design worth to research .
The design of asynchronous circuit starts with some assumption about wire delay and gate . It is significant that the chip designer checks and verifies the assumption for the device technology , the construction process , and the working environment that may affect the system’s delay distribution through its lifetime . Many academic pattern of asynchronous circuits were identified in this way .
Over the years , researchers have found a mode for the combining of asynchronous circuits whose correct functioning do not base on the delays of gates and which permit multiple switching signals simultaneously .
In conclusion , with the trend of building high dependable , ultrahigh-performance computing in the 21st century , the asynchronous design promises to play a dominant role . The related integrated circuit is LNK304GN .

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