Compiling the Language Balsa to Delay Insensitive Hardware

A. Bardsley and D.A. Edwards

Abstract

A silicon compiler, Balsa-c, has been developed for the automatic synthesis of asynchronous, delay-insensitive circuits from the language Balsa. Balsa is derived from CSP with similar language constructs and a single-bit granularity type system.

Balsa compiles to intermediate handshake circuits by an extended form of the compilation function used in the Tangram system. The handshake circuits are subsequently mapped to CMOS implementations of 4-phase bundled-data asynchronous circuits by a suite of parameterised component-generating scripts within the Cadence design framework.

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