Second Working Conference on Asynchronous Design Methodologies
Micronets: a model for decentralising control in asynchronous processor architectures
London, England
May 30-May 31
ISBN: 0-8186-7098-3
D.K. Arvind, Dept. of Comput. Sci., Edinburgh Univ., UK
Micronets model processor architectures as a network of communicating resources, in contrast to the traditional one of a linear pipeline. Micronets distribute the control to the functional units, which enables the exploitation of fine-grain concurrency between instructions. The overhead due to asynchrony is hidden with the four-phase protocol being used to implement scoreboarding and hazard avoidance mechanisms, without incurring additional control costs. This paper demonstrates the feasibility of micronet-based processors. Results are presented for SPICE-level simulations of a 0.7 /spl mu/m CMOS implementation of a datapath. The relationships between micronets and both the compiler and the computer architecture are also explored.
Index Terms:
computer architecture; pipeline processing; decentralising control; asynchronous processor architectures; micronets; processor architectures; communicating resources; fine-grain concurrency; four-phase protocol; hazard avoidance mechanisms; SPICE-level simulations; computer architecture
Citation:
D.K. Arvind, R.D. Mullins, V.E.F. Rebello, "Micronets: a model for decentralising control in asynchronous processor architectures," async, pp.190, Second Working Conference on Asynchronous Design Methodologies, 1995