Second Working Conference on Asynchronous Design Methodologies
VLSI programming of a low-power asynchronous Reed-Solomon decoder for the DCC player
London, England
May 30-May 31
ISBN: 0-8186-7098-3
A fully asynchronous Reed-Solomon decoder for the DCC player has been designed in the VLSI programming language Tangram. The main design aim was minimal power dissipation. The design decisions leading to a low-power cost-effective design are discussed. The asynchronous circuit has been fabricated and successfully incorporated in a working DCC system. We estimate that this chip is less than 20% larger in area and at a supply voltage of 5 V five times more economic in power consumption than existing clocked implementations. The chip has two power pins: one for a low and one for a high voltage. Depending on the work-load the circuit dynamically selects one of the two supply voltages by means of a power switch. If the chip is operated at 1.5 V and 5 V, the power dissipation is further reduced by a factor 20.
Index Terms:
VLSI; asynchronous circuits; Reed-Solomon codes; decoding; digital audio tape; power consumption; logic programming; VLSI programming; low-power asynchronous Reed-Solomon decoder; DCC player; Tangram; minimal power dissipation; low-power cost-effective design; asynchronous circuit; power consumption
Citation:
J. Kessels, "VLSI programming of a low-power asynchronous Reed-Solomon decoder for the DCC player," async, pp.44, Second Working Conference on Asynchronous Design Methodologies, 1995