Report Number: CSL-TR-95-663
Institution: Stanford University, Computer Systems Laboratory
Title: Automatic Technology Mapping for Asynchronous Designs
Author: Siegel, Polly Sara Kay
Date: March 1995
Abstract: Asynchronous design styles have been increasing in popularity as device sizes shrink and concurrency is exploited to increase system performance. However, asynchronous designs are difficult to implement correctly because the presence of hazards, which are of little consequence to most parts of synchronous systems, can cause improper circuit operation. Many asynchronous design styles, together with accompanying automated synthesis algorithms, address the issues of design complexity and correctness. Typically, these synthesis systems take a high-level description of an asynchronous system and produce a logic-level description of the resultant design that is hazard-free for transitions of interest. The designer then must manually translate this logic-level description into a technology- specific implementation composed of an interconnection of elements from a semi-custom cell library. At this stage, the designer must be careful not to introduce new hazards into the design. The size of designs is limited in part by the inability to safely (and reliably) map the technology-independent description into an implementation. In this thesis, we address the problem of technology mapping for two different asynchronous design styles. We first address the problem for burst-mode designs. We developed theorems and algorithms for hazard-free mapping of burst-mode designs, and implemented these algorithms on top of an existing synchronous technology mapper. We incorporated this mapper into a toolkit for asynchronous design, and used the toolkit to implement a low-power infrared communications chip. We then extended this work to apply to the problem of hazard-free technology mapping of speed-independent designs. The difficulty in this design style is in the decomposition phase of the mapping algorithm, and we developed theory and algorithms for correct hazard-free decomposition of this design style. We also developed an exact covering algorithm which takes advantage of logic sharing within the design. These algorithms were then applied to benchmark circuits.
http://i.stanford.edu/pub/cstr/reports/csl/tr/95/663/CSL-TR-95-663.pdf