Synchronous elasticization: Considerations for correct implementation and MiniMIPS case study

—Latency insensitivity is a promising design paradigm in the nanometer era since it has potential benefits of increased modularity and robustness to variations. Synchronous elasticization is one approach (among others) of transforming an ordinary clocked circuit into a latency insensitive design. This paper presents practical considerations of elasticizing reconvergent fanouts. It also investigates the suitability of previously published as well as new join and fork implementations for usage in the elastic control network. We demonstrate that elasticization comes at a cost. Measurements of a MiniMIPS processor fabricated in a 0.5 µm node show that elasticization results in area and dynamic and idle power penalties of 29%, 13% and 58.3%, respectively, without any loss in performance. These measurements do not exploit the capability of pipeline bubbles that occur if one needs to have unpredictable interface latency, or to insert extra bubbles into a pipeline due to wire delays. We �...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: VLSI
• Authors: Eliyah Kilada, Shomit Das, Kenneth S. Stevens
• Keywords: Latency Insensitive Design, Ordinary Clocked Circuit, Promising Design Paradigm, Software Engineering, VLSI 2010