The flow of converting from Synchronous design to Asynchronous Null Convention Logic design. Case study of S-box in AES encryption in secure router

In this paper, the flow of converting from synchronous to Null Convention Logic (NCL)-based asynchronous design is given. The asynchronous RTL code files in Verilog are synthesized to single rail netlists of D flip-flops, latches, combinational logic and special gates. This netlist is converted to a dual rail asynchronous netlist using NCL and then can be simulated and synthesized by other tools. The S-box which is considered as the most important component in Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm is chosen as a simple example to verify the design flow. In addition, this paper helps researchers see the power of the design tools aided by computer in asynchronous designs, and the choice to use it in the right context.