Design Methodology for Mixed Analog/Asynchronous VLSI Implementations of Communications Systems

PI正在探索混合模拟和异步电路的新设计方法。随着晶体管特征尺寸向0.1微米移动并且时钟频率超过1GHz，维持全局同步范例变得越来越困难。这个项目的目标是开发和应用混合模拟/异步电路的设计方法。该项目使用了通信领域的驱动示例，因为它们具有挑战性的性能和功率需求。通信系统的异步性质加上概率传播算法（PPA）的最新模拟实现（在诸如turbo码的系统中的关键操作）使得该领域成为潜在收益的主要目标。该项目扩展了使用概率传播的迭代解码领域的工作，以开发可以利用混合模拟/异步系统的特性的算法和架构。本计画亦应用时脉异步电路之CAD工具来设计这些系统。最后，本项目正在开发一种新的电路设计方法，用于实现混合模拟/异步系统。

The PIs are exploring a new design methodology for mixed analog and asynchronous circuits. As transistor feature sizes move towards 0.1 micron and clock frequencies exceed one GHz, it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain a globally synchronous paradigm. The goal of this project is to develop and apply a design methodology for mixed analog/asynchronous circuits. This project uses driving examples from the field of communications due to their challenging performance and power demands. The asynchronous nature of communications systems coupled with recent analog implementations of probability propagation algorithms (PPA), a key operation in such systems as turbo codes, makes this field a prime target for potential gains. This project extends the work in the area of iterative decoding using probability propagation to develop algorithms and architectures which can take advantage of the properties of a mixed analog/asynchronous system. This project also applies CAD tools for timed asynchronous circuits to design these systems. Finally, this project is developing a new circuit design methodology for the implementation of mixed analog/asynchronous systems.