Asynchronous Design (Part 2): Systems and Methodologies

This twopart article aims to provide both a short historical and technical overview of asynchronous design, as well as a snapshot of stateoftheart. Part 1 covered foundations of asynchronous design, and highlighted recent applications, including commercial advances and use in emerging application areas. Part 2 focuses on methodologies for designing asynchronous systems, including basics of hazards, synthesis and optimization methods for both logiclevel and highlevel synthesis, and the development of specification languages and CAD tool flows. Finally, two sidebars provide a summary of asynchronous processors and architectures, as well as testing.