PERFORMANCE OF SYNCHRONOUS AND ASYNCHRONOUS SCHEMES FOR VLSI SYSTEMS

Continuous advances in VLSI technology have made it possible to implement a system on a chip. One consequence of this is that the system will use a homogeneous technology for interconnections, gates, and synchronizers. Another consequence is that the system size and operation speed increase, which leads to increased problems with timing and synchronization. In this paper system and delay models necessary for the study of time performances of synchronous and asynchronous systems are developed. Clock skew is recognized as a key factor for the performance of synchronous systems. A new mode of clocking that reduces the clock skew substantially is proposed and examined. Time penalty introduced by synchronizers is recognized as a key factor for the performance of asynchronous systems. This parameter is expressed in terms of system parameters. Different techniques and recommendations concerning performance improvement of synchronous and asynchronous systems are discussed.