CS/EE 5750/6750
Asynchronous Circuit Design

Course description

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in the design of asynchronous circuits due to their ability to eliminate clock skew problems, achieve average case performance, adapt to environmental and processing variations, provide component modularity, and lower system power requirements. There is, however, a widely held belief that asynchronous design is difficult and leads to inefficient and unreliable designs. The goal of this course is to dispel this belief by introducing a systematic approach to the design of asynchronous VLSI systems from a high-level specification to an efficient and reliable circuit implementation. This course will include both hands-on experience with existing CAD tools as well as learn the algorithms within them. There will be weekly homeworks and a final project. Topics will include: specification, synthesis, optimization with timing information, performance analysis, and verification.

Instructor

Instructor: Dr. Chris Myers.
Grader: Dong-Hoon Yoo.

Prerequisites

Students should have a familiarity with computer programming (CS 2010-2020) and digital logic design (CS/EE 3700). Courses in algorithms and data structures (CS 3510), computer organization (CS/EE 3810 and CS/EE 3710) and integrated circuit design (CS/EE 5710-5720) are recommended.

Textbooks

Asynchronous Circuit Design by Chris J. Myers published by Wiley.

Project

The major emphasis of this course will be on the final project. Students will choose between many different types of projects including investigating some theoretical or algorithmic problem, writing a small CAD tool, or designing a small circuit. Each student must present the project both in a written report and a 15 minute oral presentation.