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Advances in Designing Clockless Digital Systems

This work by Prof. Steven M. Nowick from Columbia University explores the transition from synchronous to asynchronous digital systems. Synchronous systems utilize a global clock and centralized control, but face significant challenges with complexity, speed, and power consumption. Asynchronous systems, which operate without a clock, offer potential advantages such as lower power usage, increased scalability, and robustness. The presentation discusses recent developments, ongoing challenges in design, and the future of CAD tools for asynchronous systems.

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Advances in Designing Clockless Digital Systems

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  1. Advances in Designing Clockless Digital Systems Prof. Steven M. Nowick nowick@cs.columbia.edu Department of Computer Science Columbia University New York, NY, USA

  2. Introduction • Synchronous vs. Asynchronous Systems? • Synchronous Systems: use a global clock • entire system operates at fixed-rate • uses “centralized control” clock

  3. Introduction (cont.) • Synchronous vs. Asynchronous Systems? (cont.) • Asynchronous Systems:no global clock • components can operate atvarying rates • communicate locally via “handshaking” • uses “distributed control” “handshaking interfaces” (channels)

  4. Trends and Challenges Trends in Chip Design: next decade • “Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) Roadmap” (97-8) Unprecedented Challenges: • complexity and scale (= size of systems) • clock speeds • power management • reusability & scalability • “time-to-market” Design becoming unmanageable using a centralized single clock (synchronous) approach….

  5. Trends and Challenges (cont.) 1. Clock Rate: • 1980: several MegaHertz • 2001: ~750 MegaHertz - 1+ GigaHertz • 2005:several GigaHertz Design Challenge: • “clock skew”: clock must be near-simultaneous across entire chip

  6. Trends and Challenges (cont.) 2. Chip Size and Density: Total #Transistors per Chip: 60-80% increase/year • ~1970: 4 thousand(Intel 4004 microprocessor) • today: 50-200+ million • 2006 and beyond:towards 1billion+ Design Challenges: • system complexity, design time, clock distribution • clock will require 10-20 cycles to reach across chip

  7. Trends and Challenges (cont.) 3. Power Consumption • Low power: ever-increasing demand • consumer electronics: battery-powered • high-end processors: avoid expensive fans, packaging Design Challenge: • clock inherently consumes power continuously • “power-down” techniques: complex, only partly effective

  8. Trends and Challenges (cont.) 4. Time-to-Market, Design Re-Use, Scalability Increasing pressure for faster “time-to-market”. Need: • reusable components: “plug-and-play” design • flexible interfacing:under varied conditions, voltage scaling • scalable design:easy system upgrades Design Challenge: mismatch w/ central fixed-rate clock

  9. Trends and Challenges (cont.) 5. Future Trends: “Mixed Timing” Domains Chips themselves becoming distributed systems…. • contain many sub-regions, operating at different speeds: Design Challenge:breakdown of single centralized clock control

  10. Asynchronous Design: Potential Advantages Several Potential Advantages: • Lower Power • no clock components use power only “on demand” • Robustness, Scalability • no global timing“mix-and-match” variable-speed components • composable/modular design style  “object-oriented” • Higher Performance • systems not limited to “worst-case” clock rate

  11. Asynchronous Design: Some Recent Developments 1. Philips Semiconductors: • commercial use: 100 million async chips for consumer electronics: pagers, cell phones, smart cards, digital passports, automotive • 3-4x lower power, less electromagnetic interference (“EMI”) 2. Intel: • experimental: Pentium instruction-length decoder = “RAPPID” (1990’s) • 3-4x faster than synchronous subsystem 3. Sun Labs: • commercial use: high-speed FIFO’s in recent “Ultra’s” (memory access) 4. IBM Research: • experimental: high-speed pipelines, filters, mixed-timing systems Recent Startups: Fulcrum, Theseus Logic, Handshake Solutions, Silistrix

  12. Asynchronous CAD Tools: Recent Developments DARPA’s “CLASS” Program:Clockless Initiative (2003-07) Goals: - CAD tool: produce viable commercial-grade async tool flow - demonstration: a complex Boeing ASIC chip Participants: • Lead (PI): Boeing • Industrial participants: • Philips (via async incubated startup, “Handshake Solutions”) • Theseus Logic, Codetronix • Academic participants: • Columbia, UNC, UW, Yale, OSU Targets: cover wide “design space” – very robust to high-speed circuits Columbia’s role: (i) high-speed pipelines, (ii) CAD optimizations

  13. Asynchronous Design: Challenges • Critical Design Issues: • components must communicate cleanly: ‘hazard-free’ design • highly-concurrent designs: much harder to verify! • Lack of Automated “Computer-Aided Design” Tools: • most commercial “CAD” tools targeted to synchronous

  14. What Are CAD Tools? Software programs to aid digital designers = “computer-aided design” tools • automatically synthesize and optimize digital circuits CAD TOOL Input:desired circuit specification Output:optimized circuit implementation

  15. Asynchronous Design Challenge Lack of Existing Asynchronous Design Tools: • Most commercial “CAD” tools targeted to synchronous • Synchronous CAD tools: • major drivers of growth in microelectronics industry • Asynchronous “chicken-and-egg” problem: • few CAD tools  less commercial use of async design • especially lacking: tools for designing/optmzng. large systems

  16. Overview: My Research Areas • CAD Tools for Asynchronous Controllers (FSM’s) • “MINIMALIST” Package: for synthesis + optimization • Other Research Areas: • CAD Tools for Designing Large-Scale Async Systems • Mixed-Timing Interface Circuits: • for interfacing sync/async systems • High-Speed Asynchronous Pipelines

  17. CAD Tools for Async Controllers MINIMALIST: developed at Columbia University [1994-] • extensible CAD package for synthesis of asynchronous controllers • integrates synthesis, optimization and verification tools • used in 80+ sites/17+ countries (being taught in IIT Bombay) • URL:http://www.cs.columbia.edu/async Includes several optimization tools: • State Minimization • CHASM: optimal state encoding • 2-Level Hazard-Free Logic Minimization • Verilog back-end Key goal: facilitate design-space exploration

  18. 0 Inputs: req-send treq rd-iq adbld-out ack-pkt Outputs: tack peack adbld 1 2 3 8 4 9 10 5 6 7 Example: “PE-SEND-IFC” (HP Labs) req-send-/ -- req-send+ treq+ rd-iq+/ adbld+ adbld-out+/ peack+ adbld-out- treq- ack-pkt+/ peack+ rd-iq-/ peack- adbld- tack+ From HP Labs“Mayfly” Project:B.Coates, A.Davis, K.Stevens,“The Post Office Experience: Designing a Large Asynchronous Chip”, INTEGRATION: the VLSI Journal, vol. 15:3, pp. 341-66 (Oct. 1993) ack-pkt+/ peack- tack- adbld-out- treq- rd-id+/ adbld+ adbld-out+/ peack+ treq-/ tack- treq+/ tack+ adbld-out- treq+ rd-iq+/ adbld+ rd-iq-/ peack- adbld- tack- ack-pkt- treq-/ peack- tack- adbld-out- treq+ ack-pkt+/ peack+ tack+

  19. EXAMPLE (cont.): Design-Space Explorationusing MINIMALIST: optimizing for area vs. speed Examples:

  20. Functional Unit Start Functional Unit C:=X<a B:=2dx+dx Loop C< 0 End Functional Unit M:=U*X1 X:=X+dx C:=X<a Register Register Endloop CAD Tools for Large-Scale Asynchronous Systems Target Architecture: Input Specification: = “Control Data-flow Graph” control unit Ctrlr 1 Ctrlr 2 Ctrlr 3 Target: - synthesize distributed control - 1 controller per functional unit [Theobald/Nowick, IEEE Design Automation Conf. (2001)]

  21. Asynchronous Domain Asynchronous Domain Synchronous Domain 2 Synchronous Domain 1 Mixed-Timing Interfaces Goal: provide low-latency communication between “timing domains” Challenge: avoid synchronization errors

  22. Asynchronous Domain Asynchronous Domain Synchronous Domain 2 Synchronous Domain 1 Mixed-Timing Interfaces: Solution Async-Sync FIFO Sync-Async FIFO Async-Sync FIFO Mixed-Clock FIFO’s Solution:insert mixed-timing FIFO’s provide safe data transfer … developed complete family of mixed-timing interface circuits[Chelcea/Nowick, IEEE Design Automation Conf. (2001)]

  23. High-Speed Asynchronous Pipelines “datapath component” = adder, multiplier, etc. NON-PIPELINED COMPUTATION: global clock SYNCHRONOUS

  24. High-Speed Asynchronous Pipelines “PIPELINED COMPUTATION”:like an assembly line global clock SYNCHRONOUS no global clock ASYNCHRONOUS

  25. High-Speed Asynchronous Pipelines Goal: extremely fast async datapath components • speed: comparable to fastest existing synchronous designs • additional benefits: • dynamically adapt to variable-speed interfaces: voltage scaling! • “elastic” processing of data in pipeline • no clock distribution Contributions: 3 new async pipeline styles[SINGH/NOWICK] • MOUSETRAP:static logic • High-Capacity/Lookahead:dynamic logic Obtain multi-GigaHertz speeds Used by IBM, currently incorporated into Philips tool flow

  26. MOUSETRAP: A Basic FIFO (no computation) Stages communicate using transition-signaling: Latch Controller ackN-1 ackN En doneN reqN reqN+1 Data in Data out Data Latch Stage N-1 Stage N Stage N+1 [Singh/Nowick, IEEE Int. Conf. on Computer Design (2001)]

  27. logic logic logic “MOUSETRAP” Pipeline: w/computation Function Blocks:use “synchronous” single-rail circuits (not hazard-free!) “Bundled Data” Requirement: • each “req”must arrive after data inputs valid and stable Latch Controller ackN-1 ackN reqN+1 reqN delay delay delay doneN Data Latch Stage N-1 Stage N Stage N+1

  28. MOUSETRAP: A Basic FIFO Stages communicate using transition-signaling: Latch Controller 1 transition per data item! ackN-1 ackN En doneN reqN reqN+1 Data in Data out Data Latch Stage N-1 Stage N Stage N+1 One Data Item

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