Distinguished Dissertations

INTRODUCTION Asynchronous design and its advantages Disadvantages of asynchronous design Book overview Publications ASYNCHRONOUS DESIGN Introduction Asynchronous design Summary SYSTEM LEVEL INTERCONNECT PRINCIPLES Point-to-point communication paths Multipoint interconnect topology Bus protocol issues Interconnect performance objectives Commercial on-chip buses Summary THE PHYSICAL (WIRE) LAYER Wire theory Electrical and physical characteristics Termination Crosstalk Summary THE LINK LAYER Centralised vs distributed interfaces Signalling convention Data encoding Handshake sources Bidirectional data transfer Multiple initiators on one channel Multiple targets Multipoint bus-channel interfaces MARBLE's link layer channels Summary PROTOCOL LAYER Transfer phases Exceptions Defer and bridging Mapping transfer phases onto channel cycles Transfer cycle routing Transfer cycle initiation MARBLE's dual channel bus architecture TRANSACTION LAYER Split transactions Response ordering MARBLE's transaction layer MARBLE: A DUAL CHANNEL SPLIT TRANSFER BUS MARBLE protocol and signal summary Bus transaction interface implementation MARBLE in the AMULET3H system Summary EVALUATION The MARBLE testbed Simulation of MARBLE in AMULET3H Analysis of delay distribution Hardware requirements Comparison with synchronous alternatives CONCLUSION Advantages and disadvantages of MARBLE Improving the MARBLE bus Alternative interconnect solutions and future work The future of asynchronous SoC interconnect? APPENDIX A: MARBLE SCHEMATICS REFERENCES INDEX