The design and verification of a high-performance low-control-overhead asynchronous differential equation solver

This paper describes the design and verification of a high-performance asynchronous differential equation solver benchmark circuit. The design has low-control-overhead which allows its average-case speed (tested at 22/spl deg/C and 3.3 V) to be 48% faster than any comparable synchronous design (designed to operate at 100/spl deg/C and 3 V for the slow process corner). The techniques to reduce completion sensing overhead and hide control overhead at the circuit, architectural, and protocol levels are discussed. In addition, symbolic model checking techniques are described that were used to gain higher confidence in the correctness of the timed distributed control.