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Asynchronous Logic: Ready For It?
prostoalex writes "For a while academia and R&D labs explored the possibilities of asynchronous logic. Now Bernard Cole from Embedded.com tells us that asynchronous logic might receive more acceptance than expected in modern designs. The main advantages, as article states, are 'reduced power consumption, reduced current peaks, and reduced electromagnetic emission', to quote a prominent researcher from Philips Semiconductors. Earlier Bernard Cole wrote a column on self-timed asynchronous logic."
Here's some fairly interesting skiddaddle about the paradigm of an asynchronous machine -->
Asynchronous (also called event driven and self-timed) logic is defined here as logic that operates without the co-ordination of a global clock. That being said, here are today's Top 3 interesting details about this kind of computing.
1. When completion detection is used in asynchronous circuit design the computation rate tends towards the average rate of the system components rather than the
worst case rate of components as in clocked systems.
2. Because asynchronous components only begin processing data when it becomes available they will only consume dynamic power when doing useful work; as compared with a clocked system which consumes dynamic power on every clock cycle regardless of the work done. This reduces system power consumption which is especially important for portable equipment.
3. Asynchronous circuits are more modular because they rely only on local communication between components as compared to circuits with global clocking. The modularity claim leads to arguments that asynchronous circuits may be easier to design and formally verify.
Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S., Canada, B3H 3J5
What do you get when you mix a Beowulf cluster with this? Parallel computing plus asynchronous computing... drooolll.
Computers Without Clocks