The Design and Evaluation of an Asynchronous Microprocessor
S. B. Furber, P. Day, J. D. Garside, N. C. Paver, S. Temple and J. V. Woods
Abstract
AMULET1 is a fully asynchronous implementation of the ARM microprocessor
which was designed at Manchester University between 1991 and 1993. First
silicon arrived in April 1994 and was found to be functional, demonstrating
that asynchronous design of complex circuits is feasible with present day
CAD tools.
This paper presents the motivation for the work, some of the design choices
which were made, the problems which were encountered during the development
of the design and the characteristics of the device itself. The future
potential for asynchronous circuits is also discussed.
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