An A-FPGA architecture for relative timing based asynchronous designs

pre-printThis paper presents an asynchronous FPGA architecture that is capable of implementing relative timing based asynchronous designs. The architecture uses the Xilinx 7-Series architecture as a starting point and proposes modifications that would make it asynchronous design capable while keeping it fully functional for synchronous designs. Even though the architecture requires additional components, it is observed when implemented on the 64-nm node, the area of the slice was increases marginally by 7%. The architecture leaves configurable routing structures untouched and does not compromise on performance of the synchronous architecture

Diseño de un procesador asíncrono de 8 bits y su implementación en un dispositivo de lógica programable

En este diseño e implementación, se pretende materializar la metodología y el conocimiento adquirido en diseño de circuitos asíncronos (circuitos digitales que no dependen de una señal de reloj para sincronizar su funcionamiento), tema desarrollado durante el periodo de maestría, como auxiliar de investigación en los semestres I y II, luego como tema de estudio en las asignaturas de investigación I, II y III. Este procesador asíncrono de 8 bits, es el primer diseño de un procesador basado en circuitos asíncronos implementado en dispositivos de lógica programable en el departamento de electrónica de la Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, constituyéndose en un paso adelante en la apropiación tecnología. El procesador es el componente digital que involucra procesos de control, procesamiento y almacenamiento de datos de manera secuencial y organizada, convirtiéndose en el diseño por excelencia para demostrar la validez y aplicabilidad de un diseño asíncrono.Magíster en Ingeniería ElectrónicaMaestrí

Asynchronous techniques for new generation variation-tolerant FPGA

PhD ThesisThis thesis presents a practical scenario for asynchronous logic implementation that would benefit the modern Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) technology in improving reliability. A method based on Asynchronously-Assisted Logic (AAL) blocks is proposed here in order to provide the right degree of variation tolerance, preserve as much of the traditional FPGAs structure as possible, and make use of asynchrony only when necessary or beneficial for functionality. The newly proposed AAL introduces extra underlying hard-blocks that support asynchronous interaction only when needed and at minimum overhead. This has the potential to avoid the obstacles to the progress of asynchronous designs, particularly in terms of area and power overheads. The proposed approach provides a solution that is complementary to existing variation tolerance techniques such as the late-binding technique, but improves the reliability of the system as well as reducing the design’s margin headroom when implemented on programmable logic devices (PLDs) or FPGAs. The proposed method suggests the deployment of configurable AAL blocks to reinforce only the variation-critical paths (VCPs) with the help of variation maps, rather than re-mapping and re-routing. The layout level results for this method's worst case increase in the CLB’s overall size only of 6.3%. The proposed strategy retains the structure of the global interconnect resources that occupy the lion’s share of the modern FPGA’s soft fabric, and yet permits the dual-rail iv completion-detection (DR-CD) protocol without the need to globally double the interconnect resources. Simulation results of global and interconnect voltage variations demonstrate the robustness of the method

Dynamically reconfigurable asynchronous processor

The main design requirements for today's mobile applications are: · high throughput performance. · high energy efficiency. · high programmability. Until now, the choice of platform has often been limited to Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), due to their best-of-breed performance and power consumption. The economies of scale possible with these high-volume markets have traditionally been able to hide the high Non-Recurring Engineering (NRE) costs required for designing and fabricating new ASICs. However, with the NREs and design time escalating with each generation of mobile applications, this practice may be reaching its limit. Designers today are looking at programmable solutions, so that they can respond more rapidly to changes in the market and spread costs over several generations of mobile applications. However, there have been few feasible alternatives to ASICs: Digital Signals Processors (DSPs) and microprocessors cannot meet the throughput requirements, whereas Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) require too much area and power. Coarse-grained dynamically reconfigurable architectures offer better solutions for high throughput applications, when power and area considerations are taken into account. One promising example is the Reconfigurable Instruction Cell Array (RICA). RICA consists of an array of cells with an interconnect that can be dynamically reconfigured on every cycle. This allows quite complex datapaths to be rendered onto the fabric and executed in a single configuration - making these architectures particularly suitable to stream processing. Furthermore, RICA can be programmed from C, making it a good fit with existing design methodologies. However the RICA architecture has a drawback: poor scalability in terms of area and power. As the core gets bigger, the number of sequential elements in the array must be increased significantly to maintain the ability to achieve high throughputs through pipelining. As a result, a larger clock tree is required to synchronise the increased number of sequential elements. The clock tree therefore takes up a larger percentage of the area and power consumption of the core. This thesis presents a novel Dynamically Reconfigurable Asynchronous Processor (DRAP), aimed at high-throughput mobile applications. DRAP is based on the RICA architecture, but uses asynchronous design techniques - methods of designing digital systems without clocks. The absence of a global clock signal makes DRAP more scalable in terms of power and area overhead than its synchronous counterpart. The DRAP architecture maintains most of the benefits of custom asynchronous design, whilst also providing programmability via conventional high-level languages. Results show that the DRAP processor delivers considerably lower power consumption when compared to a market-leading Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) processor and a low-power ARM processor. For example, DRAP resulted in a reduction in power consumption of 20 times compared to the ARM7 processor, and 29 times compared to the TIC64x VLIW, when running the same benchmark capped to the same throughput and for the same process technology (0.13μm). When compared to an equivalent RICA design, DRAP was up to 22% larger than RICA but resulted in a power reduction of up to 1.9 times. It was also capable of achieving up to 2.8 times higher throughputs than RICA for the same benchmarks

FPGA Architecture for Multi-style Asynchronous Logic

This paper presents a novel FPGA architecture for implementing various styles of asynchronous logic. The main objective is to break the dependency between the FPGA architecture dedicated to asynchronous logic and the logic style. The innovative aspects of the architecture are described. Moreover the structure is well suited to be rebuilt and adapted to fit with further asynchronous logic evolutions thanks to the architecture genericity. A full-adder was implemented in different styles of logic to show the architecture flexibility. 1

FPGA architecture for multi-style asynchronous logic [full-adder example]

ISSN: 1-530-159-1This paper presents a novel FPGA architecture for implementing various styles of asynchronous logic. The main objective is to break the dependency between the FPGA architecture, dedicated to asynchronous logic, and the logic style. The innovative aspects of the architecture are described. Moreover, the structure is well suited to be rebuilt and adapted to fit with further asynchronous logic evolutions, thanks to the architecture genericity. A full-adder was implemented in different styles of logic to show the architecture flexibility