Asynchronous Data-Driven Circuit Synthesis

A method is described for synthesizing asynchronous circuits based on the Handshake Circuit paradigm but employing a data-driven, rather than a control-driven, style. This approach attempts to combine the performance advantages of data-driven asynchronous design styles with the handshake circuit style of construction used in existing syntax-directed synthesis. The method is demonstrated on a significant design-a 32-bit microprocessor. This example shows that the data-driven circuit style provides better performance than control-driven synthesized circuits. This paper extends previous reported work by illustrating how conditional execution, oft-cited as a problem for data-driven descriptions, is handled within the system, and by a more detailed analysis of the design example.