Design of self-timed circuits: structural methods in hierarchicalanalysis

Self-timed circuits have unique properties of the delay-independence and fail-safe. One of the major problems of circuits design, self-timed analysis of large circuits, is considered. In the traditional approach, circuits are analyzed by event methods with elements switches. Computational complexity in this approach increase exponentially with the size and/or other circuit parameters, which does not allow analyzing the most practically important circuits. The solution is proposed in the functional approach, without using switches, and in the hierarchical description of circuits. In the hierarchical analysis along with the analysis of logical functions, the author proposes to use structural methods, i. e., to study the interaction of elements and fragments. This method allows reducing the complexity of calculations dramatically and thus solves one of the major problems of self-timed circuits design — analysis of circuits of any size. Efficiency of the suggested methods is confirmed using the experimental software.