Towards a Framework for the Distributed Simulation of Asynchronous Hardware

G. Theodoropoulos, D.A. Edwards

Abstract

Synchronous VLSI design is approaching a critical point, with clock distribution becoming an increasingly costly and complicated issue and power consumption rapidly emerging as a major concern. The last decade has witnessed a resur- gence of interest in asynchronous logic which promises to liberate digital design from the inherent problems of synchronous systems. This activity has revealed a need for modelling and simulation techniques suitable for the asynchronous design style. The concurrent process algebra Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) is particularly suitable for the specifica- tion of asynchronous systems. This paper discusses a framework for the distributed simulation of asynchronous hardware, adopting Balsa, a CSP-like notation, as a hardware description language.

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