The talk presents a systematic way of studying design spaces applied to timed and untimed, bundled, 2-- and 4phase asynchronous latch controllers. The work is joint work with Ken Stevens ECE Utah who supplies all the engineering insights and expertise.
We derive a model for asynchronous latch controllers tailored to the study of their behaviours when pipelined in series, parallel, rings, .... Starting with the most state rich behaviour satisfying a protocol, we systematically cut away states to generate families of reduced-state behaviours. The cuts enable all behaviours to be ordered and related. They predict behaviours when pipelined singly, in parallel, in rings ... and such properties as liveness and occupancy. The cuts also reveal the full design space. Ken has (almost) automated the generation of circuits from our models and generated novel designs with good behaviours.
Graham Birtwistle entered his 7th decade of university life this year (work that one out). He has a PhD from Sheffield on the behaviour of thin arch dams, and has worked in Norway on Simula compilers and Canada on hardware verification in HOL and CCS. Ever tha man to catch the tidal wave of research his chief claim to fame lies in being (somewhat contested) the first man to give up OO programming (1984 appropriately).
published on: 8th May 2010