Impact of C-elements in asynchronous circuits

Asynchronous circuits are a potential solution to address some of the obstacles in deep submicron (DSM) design. One of the most frequently used devices to build asynchronous circuits is the C-element, a device present as a basic building block in several asynchronous design styles. This work measures the impact of three different C-element types. The paper compares the use of each implementation to build a real case asynchronous circuit, an RSA cryptographic core, and reports results of precise electrical simulations of each C-element. Findings in this work show that previous results in the literature about C-element implementation types must be re-evaluated when using C-elements in DSM technologies.