Abstract

Communication costs, which have the potential to throttle design performance as scaling continues, are mathematically modeled and compared for various pipeline methodologies. First-order models are created for common pipeline protocols, including clocked flopped, clocked time-borrowing latch, asynchronous two-phase, four-phase, delay-insensitive, single-track, and source synchronous. The models are parameterized for throughput, energy, and bandwidth. The models share common parameters for different pipeline protocols and implementations to enable a fair apple-to-apple comparison. The accuracy of the models are demonstrated for complete implementations of a subset of the protocols by applying 65-nm process simulated parameter values against the SPICE simulation of full pipeline implementations. One can determine when asynchronous communication is superior at the physical level to …

Date

2010

Authors

Kenneth S Stevens, Pankaj Golani, Peter A Beerel

Journal

IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems

Volume

19

Issue

3

Pages

369-382

Publisher

IEEE