Glitch-free discretely programmable clock generation on chip

In this paper we describe a solution for a glitch-free discretely programmable clock generation unit (DPGC). The scheme is compatible with a GALS communication scheme in the sense that clock gating and clock pausing are possible. Besides, the proposed scheme does not require waiting for a new clock as the frequency change is seen as almost instantaneously. A prototype has been designed for a 0.13µm triple-well CMOS process technology to also study the properties of the scheme with respect to voltage scaling

GALS for Bursty Data Transfer based on Clock Coupling

In this paper we introduce a novel burst-mode GALS technique. The goal of this technique is improving the performance of the GALS approach for systems with predominantly bursty data transfer. This new technique has been used to implement a GALS-based version of a hardware accelerator of a 60 GHz OFDM baseband processor. The simulation results show a significant performance improvement in comparison with a classical implementation of GALS using pausible clocking. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

RAPPID: an asynchronous instruction length decoder

Journal ArticleThis paper describes an investigation of potential advantages and risks of applying an aggressive asynchronous design methodology to Intel Architecture. RAPPID ("Revolving Asynchronous Pentium® Processor Instruction Decoder"), a prototype IA32 instruction length decoding and steering unit, was implemented using self-timed techniques. RAPPID chip was fabricated on a 0.25m CMOS process and tested successfully. Results show significant advantages-in particular, performance of 2.5-4.5 instructions/nS-with manageable risks using this design technology. RAPPID achieves three times the throughput and half the latency, dissipating only half the power and requiring about the same area as an existing 400MHz clocked circuit