Research

There are multiple reasons for designing asynchronous or self-timed circuits, systems, and algorithms:
low power, low energy, low delay-sensitivity, and low electro-magnetic interference,
as well as high speed, high delay-tolerance, and high scalability.

Our goal is to design and study hardware and algorithms that scale and distribute over space and time.
We do this by dividing the hardware into self-timed components and communication protocols.
Inside our basic non-composite component, behaviors can be as chaotic as a kindergarten playground.
This is fine, because basic components are small enough to oversee and control events.
The protocols between the components are as orderly as a "crocodile" chain of children
going from playground to playground, which guarantees that the communications are correct.

Instead of "crocodile" and "kindergarten" we will use the terms "link" and "joint" respectively.
Links transport and store data, while joints compute and control the flow of data.
To emphasize their transport and storage capability, we sometimes draw links as long rectangles.
To emphasize their dataflow manipulation capability, we sometimes draw joints as stick figures.
Links and joints interact using a full-empty protocol - a generic protocol for handshaking.
Each self-timed action can be controlled with an individual go signal.
The individual go signals enable us to start and stop any self-timed operation reliably
- key criteria for initialization, test, and debug.

The resulting link-joint model with its full-empty protocol and its local action-state control provides
a clean and simple interface for hardware-software co-design and co-test of distributed systems.
We want to use this clean and simple interface to enable computer scientists and electrical engineers
to collaborate and to design and test - jointly - the systems of the future whose computations
- we believe - will be distributed over space and time and will be of a self-timed nature.

At this web site you will find a selection of our presentations and publications.
Feel free to download and use our work, but please reference it when you do.