Performance-driven synthesis of asynchronous controllers

We examine the implications of a new hazard-free combinational logic synthesis method [8], which generates multiplexor trees from binary decision diagrams (BDDs) - representations of logic functions factored recursively with respect to input variables - on extended burst-mode asynchronous synthesis. First, the use of the BDD-based synthesis reduces the constraints on state minimization and assignment, which reduces the number of additional state variables required in many cases. Second, in cases where conditional signals are sampled, it eliminates the need for state variable changes preceding output changes, which reduces overall input to output latency. Third, selection variables can easily be ordered to minimize the latency on a user-specified path, which is important for optimizing the performance of systems that use asynchronous components. We present extensive evaluations showing that, with only minimal optimization, the BDD-based synthesis gives comparable results in area with our previous exact two-level synthesis method. We also give a detailed example of the specified path optimization.