Report Number: CSL-TR-94-644
Institution: Stanford University, Computer Systems Laboratory
Title: Synthesis of Asynchronous Controllers for Heterogeneous Systems
Author: Yun, Kenneth Yi
Date: August 1994
Abstract: There are two synchronization mechanisms used in digital systems: synchronous and asynchronous. Synchronous or asynchronous refers to whether the system events occur in lock-step based on a clock or not. Today's system components typically employ the synchronous paradigm primarily because of the availability of the rich set of design tools and algorithms and, perhaps, because of the designers' perception of ``ease of design'' and the lack of alternatives. Even so, the interfaces among the system components do not strictly adhere to the synchronous paradigm because of the cost benefit of mixing modules operating at different clock rates and modules with asynchronous interfaces. This thesis addresses the problem of how to synthesize controllers operating in heterogeneous systems - systems with components employing different synchronization mechanisms. We introduce a new design style called extended-burst-mode. The extended-burst-mode design style covers a wide spectrum of sequential circuits ranging from delay-insensitive to synchronous. We can synthesize multiple-input change asynchronous finite state machines, and many circuits that fall in the gray area between synchronous and asynchronous which are difficult or impossible to synthesize automatically using existing methods. Our implementation of extended-burst-mode machines uses standard combinational logic, generates low-latency outputs and guarantees freedom from hazards at the gate level. We present a complete set of automated sequential synthesis algorithms: hazard-free state assignment, hazard-free state minimization, and critical-race-free state encoding. We also describe two radically different hazard-free combinational synthesis methods: two-level sums-of-products implementation and multiplexor trees implementation. Existing theories for hazard-free combinational synthesis are extended to handle non-monotonic input changes. A set of requirements for freedom from logic hazards is presented for each combinational synthesis method. Experimental data from a large set of examples are presented and compared to competing methods, whenever possible. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the design style and the synthesis tool, the design of a commercial-scale SCSI controller data path is presented. This design is functionally compatible with an existing high performance commercial chip and meets the ANSI SCSI-2 standard.
http://i.stanford.edu/pub/cstr/reports/csl/tr/94/644/CSL-TR-94-644.pdf