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From: naumann@autarch.acsu.buffalo.edu (Dirk Naumann)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Totally asynchronous computers
Message-ID: <53378@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
Date: 3 Jan 91 18:53:09 GMT
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Although it is right to say that totally asynchronous systems are
hard to design, this can not be said about self timed circuits.
In conventional asynchronous design you have to deal with races and 
hazards, which make designing quite a experience.
This is different in self timed designs like the ones designed
by Martin et al. Races and hazards are eliminated by design, since
due to the four phase handshaking two signals never change their value
at the same time.
Another advantage, which comes to my mind is that this method of
designing self timed circuits can be automated.
Ada is also bassed on message passing to communicate with parallel
processes. Couldn't it be possible to describe self timed circuits
in ada. Something like this has been done be Sutherland and ???.
They were using INMOS occam to describe an asynchronous (self-timed?)
circuit.


-- 
Dirk Naumann
naumann@eng.buffalo.edu, ECE Department, SUNY at Buffalo