Synthesis of speed-independent circuits from algebraic specifications

The authors propose a novel method for the synthesis of asynchronous speed-independent circuits that communicate using handshaking protocols. The circuit´s behavior is specified through a collection of properties. Each property is expressed algebraically and describes a partial view of the required behavior. The global behavior is obtained by the Boolean product of the algebraic expressions. Classical techniques of race-free synthesis are then adapted to take into account external environments (users) which do not necessarily respect the fundamental mode hypothesis. The method is illustrated by a dual-rail code queue element that communicates using a four-cycle signaling protocol on both the input-data and the output-data interconnections