Newsgroups: comp.arch
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watdragon!rose!ccplumb
From: ccplumb@rose.uwaterloo.ca (Colin Plumb)
Subject: Re: Asynchronous Microprocessors
Message-ID: <1991Jan26.071918.16236@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Sender: daemon@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Owner of Many System Processes)
Organization: University of Waterloo
References: <PAVERN.91Jan7163634@r6.uk.ac.man.cs> <44601@mips.mips.COM>
Date: Sat, 26 Jan 91 07:19:18 GMT
Lines: 11

One alternate variation on "self-clocking" has also been used.  Bipolar
Integrated Technology, makers of all kinds of fast ECL goodies did a
floating point ALU that ran off an internally-generated 500 MHz clock.
(I believe it was one generation before their current 10 ns pipe/20 ns
latency hot boxes).  The hard part, I was told in a bull session with one
of their engineers, was getting the oscillator speed to scale with the
rest of the chip, because you can't speed-grade the things.  Either they
work, or they don't.  It was, I was told, a nifty idea, and they got it
working, but never again.
-- 
	-Colin