7 research outputs found

    Design of variation-tolerant synchronizers for multiple clock and voltage domains

    Get PDF
    PhD ThesisParametric variability increasingly affects the performance of electronic circuits as the fabrication technology has reached the level of 32nm and beyond. These parameters may include transistor Process parameters (such as threshold voltage), supply Voltage and Temperature (PVT), all of which could have a significant impact on the speed and power consumption of the circuit, particularly if the variations exceed the design margins. As systems are designed with more asynchronous protocols, there is a need for highly robust synchronizers and arbiters. These components are often used as interfaces between communication links of different timing domains as well as sampling devices for asynchronous inputs coming from external components. These applications have created a need for new robust designs of synchronizers and arbiters that can tolerate process, voltage and temperature variations. The aim of this study was to investigate how synchronizers and arbiters should be designed to tolerate parametric variations. All investigations focused mainly on circuit-level and transistor level designs and were modeled and simulated in the UMC90nm CMOS technology process. Analog simulations were used to measure timing parameters and power consumption along with a “Monte Carlo” statistical analysis to account for process variations. Two main components of synchronizers and arbiters were primarily investigated: flip-flop and mutual-exclusion element (MUTEX). Both components can violate the input timing conditions, setup and hold window times, which could cause metastability inside their bistable elements and possibly end in failures. The mean-time between failures is an important reliability feature of any synchronizer delay through the synchronizer. The MUTEX study focused on the classical circuit, in addition to a number of tolerance, based on increasing internal gain by adding current sources, reducing the capacitive loading, boosting the transconductance of the latch, compensating the existing Miller capacitance, and adding asymmetry to maneuver the metastable point. The results showed that some circuits had little or almost no improvements, while five techniques showed significant improvements by reducing τ and maintaining high tolerance. Three design approaches are proposed to provide variation-tolerant synchronizers. wagging synchronizer proposed to First, the is significantly increase reliability over that of the conventional two flip-flop synchronizer. The robustness of the wagging technique can be enhanced by using robust τ latches or adding one more cycle of synchronization. The second approach is the Metastability Auto-Detection and Correction (MADAC) latch which relies on swiftly detecting a metastable event and correcting it by enforcing the previously stored logic value. This technique significantly reduces the resolution time down from uncertain synchronization technique is proposed to transfer signals between Multiple- Voltage Multiple-Clock Domains (MVD/MCD) that do not require conventional level-shifters between the domains or multiple power supplies within each domain. This interface circuit uses a synchronous set and feedback reset protocol which provides level-shifting and synchronization of all signals between the domains, from a wide range of voltage-supplies and clock frequencies. Overall, synchronizer circuits can tolerate variations to a greater extent by employing the wagging technique or using a MADAC latch, while MUTEX tolerance can suffice with small circuit modifications. Communication between MVD/MCD can be achieved by an asynchronous handshake without a need for adding level-shifters.The Saudi Arabian Embassy in London, Umm Al-Qura University, Saudi Arabi

    Power delivery mechanisms for asynchronous loads in energy harvesting systems

    Get PDF
    PhD ThesisFor systems depending on methods, a fundamental contradiction in the power delivery chain has existed between conventional to supply it. DC/DC conversion (e.g.) has therefore been an integral part of such systems to resolve this contradiction. be made tolerant to a much wider range of Vdd variance. This may open up opportunities for much more energy efficient methods of power delivery. performance of different power delivery mechanisms driving both asynchronous and synchronous loads directly from a harvester source bypassing bulky energy method, which employs a energy from a EH circuit depending on load and source conditions, is developed. through comprehensive comparative analysis. Based on the novel CBB power delivery method, an asynchronous controller is circuits to work with tasks. The successful asynchronous control design drives a case study that is meant to explore relations between power path and task path. To deal with different tasks with variable harvested power, systems may have a range of operation conditions and thus dynamically call for CBB or SCC type power set of capacitors to form CBB or SCC is implemented with economic system size. This work presents an unconventional way of designing a compact-size, quick- circuit overcome large voltage variation in EH systems and implement smart power management for harsh EH environment. The power delivery mechanisms (SCC, employed to help asynchronous- logic-based chip testing and micro-scale EH system demonstrations

    Interpreted graph models

    Get PDF
    A model class called an Interpreted Graph Model (IGM) is defined. This class includes a large number of graph-based models that are used in asynchronous circuit design and other applications of concurrecy. The defining characteristic of this model class is an underlying static graph-like structure where behavioural semantics are attached using additional entities, such as tokens or node/arc states. The similarities in notation and expressive power allow a number of operations on these formalisms, such as visualisation, interactive simulation, serialisation, schematic entry and model conversion to be generalised. A software framework called Workcraft was developed to take advantage of these properties of IGMs. Workcraft provides an environment for rapid prototyping of graph-like models and related tools. It provides a large set of standardised functions that considerably facilitate the task of providing tool support for any IGM. The concept of Interpreted Graph Models is the result of research on methods of application of lower level models, such as Petri nets, as a back-end for simulation and verification of higher level models that are more easily manipulated. The goal is to achieve a high degree of automation of this process. In particular, a method for verification of speed-independence of asynchronous circuits is presented. Using this method, the circuit is specified as a gate netlist and its environment is specified as a Signal Transition Graph. The circuit is then automatically translated into a behaviourally equivalent Petri net model. This model is then composed with the specification of the environment. A number of important properties can be established on this compound model, such as the absence of deadlocks and hazards. If a trace is found that violates the required property, it is automatically interpreted in terms of switching of the gates in the original gate-level circuit specification and may be presented visually to the circuit designer. A similar technique is also used for the verification of a model called Static Data Flow Structure (SDFS). This high level model describes the behaviour of an asynchronous data path. SDFS is particularly interesting because it models complex behaviours such as preemption, early evaluation and speculation. Preemption is a technique which allows to destroy data objects in a computation pipeline if the result of computation is no longer needed, reducing the power consumption. Early evaluation allows a circuit to compute the output using a subset of its inputs and preempting the inputs which are not needed. In speculation, all conflicting branches of computation run concurrently without waiting for the selecting condition; once the selecting condition is computed the unneeded branches are preempted. The automated Petri net based verification technique is especially useful in this case because of the complex nature of these features. As a result of this work, a number of cases are presented where the concept of IGMs and the Workcraft tool were instrumental. These include the design of two different types of arbiter circuits, the design and debugging of the SDFS model, synthesis of asynchronous circuits from the Conditional Partial Order Graph model and the modification of the workflow of Balsa asynchronous circuit synthesis system.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceEPSRCGBUnited Kingdo

    Distributing abstract machines

    Get PDF
    Today's distributed programs are often written using either explicit message passing or Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs) that are not natively integrated in the language. It is difficult to establish the correctness of programs written this way compared to programs written for a single computer. We propose a generalisation of RPCs that are natively integrated in a functional programming language meaning that they have support for higher-order calls across node boundaries. Our focus is on how such languages can be compiled correctly and efficiently. We present four different solutions. Two of them are based on interaction semantics --- the Geometry of Interaction and game semantics --- and two are extensions of conventional abstract machines --- the Krivine machine and the SECD machine. To target as general distributed systems as possible our solutions support RPCs without sending code. We prove the correctness of the abstract machines with respect to their single-node execution, and show their viability for use for compilation by implementing prototype compilers based on them. The conventionally based machines are shown to enable efficient programs. Our intention is that these abstract machines can form the foundation for future programming languages that use the idea of higher-order RPCs

    Implementation exploration of imaging algorithms on FPGAs

    Get PDF
    This portfolio thesis documents the work carried out as part of the Engineering Doctorate (EngD) programme undertaken at the Institute for System Level Integration. This work was sponsored and aided by Thales Optronics Ltd, a company well versed in developing specialised electro-optical devices. Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are the devices of choice for custom image processing algorithms due to their reconfigurable nature. This also makes them more economical for low volume production runs where non-recoverable engineering costs are a large factor. Asynchronous circuits have had a remarkable surge in development over the last 20 years, to such an extent that they are beginning to displace conventional designs for niche applications. Their unique ability to adapt to environmental and data dependent processing needs have lead them to out-perform synchronous designs in ASIC platforms for certain applications. Abstract The main body of research was separated into three areas of work presented as three technical documents. The first area of research addresses an FPGA implementation of contrast limited adaptive histogram equalisation (CLAHE), an algorithm which provides increased visual performance over conventional methods. From this, a novel implementation strategy was provided along with the key design factors for future use in a commercial context. The second area of research investigates the ability to create asynchronous circuits on FPGA devices. The main motivation for this work was to establish if any of the benefits which had been demonstrated for ASIC devices can be applied to FPGA devices. The investigation surmised the most suitable asynchronous design style for FPGA devices, a design flow to allow asynchronous circuits to function correctly on FPGAs and novel design strategies to implement consistent and repeatable asynchronous components. The result of this work established a route to implement circuits asynchronously in an FPGA. The final area of research focused on a unique conversion tool that allows synchronous circuits to run asynchronously on FPGAs whilst maintaining the same data flow patterns. This research produced an automated tool capable of implementing circuits on an FPGA asynchronously from their synchronous descriptions. This approach allowed the primary motivators of this work to be addressed. The results of this work show timing, resource utilisation and noise spectrum benefits by implementing circuits asynchronously on FPGA devices

    A Flexible, Low-Power, Programmable Unsupervised Neural Network Based on Microcontrollers for Medical Applications

    Get PDF
    We present an implementation and laboratory tests of a winner takes all (WTA) artificial neural network (NN) on two microcontrollers (ÎĽC) with the ARM Cortex M3 and the AVR cores. The prospective application of this device is in wireless body sensor network (WBSN) in an on-line analysis of electrocardiograph (ECG) and electromyograph (EMG) biomedical signals. The proposed device will be used as a base station in the WBSN, acquiring and analysing the signals from the sensors placed on the human body. The proposed system is equiped with an analog-todigital converter (ADC), and allows for multi-channel acquisition of analog signals, preprocessing (filtering) and further analysis
    corecore