This paper presents a low-power FPGA based on mixed synchronous/asynchronous design. The proposed FPGA consists of several sections which consist of logic blocks, and each section can be used as either a synchronous circuit or an asynchronous circuit according to its workload. An asynchronous circuit is power-efficient for a low-workload section since it does not require the clock tree which always consumes the power. On the other hand, a synchronous circuit is power-efficient for a high-workload section because of its simple hardware. The major consideration is designing an area-efficient synchronous/asynchronous hybrid logic block. This is because the hardware amount of the asynchronous circuit is about double that of the synchronous circuit, and the typical implementation wastes half of the hardware in synchronous mode. To solve this problem, we propose a hybrid logic block that can be used as either a single asynchronous logic block or two synchronous logic blocks. The proposed FPGA is fabricated using a 65-nm CMOS process. When the workload of a section is below 22%, asynchronous mode is more power-efficient than synchronous mode. Otherwise synchronous mode is more power-efficient.

This paper presents an asynchronous FPGA that combines 4-phase dual-rail encoding and LEDR (Level-Encoded Dual-Rail) encoding. 4-phase dual-rail encoding is employed to achieve small area and low power for function units, while LEDR encoding is employed to achieve high throughput and low power for the data transfer using programmable interconnection resources. Area-efficient protocol converters and their control circuits are also proposed in transistor-level implementation. The proposed FPGA is designed using the e-Shuttle 65nm CMOS process. Compared to the 4-phase-dual-rail-based FPGA, the throughput is increased by 69% with almost the same transistor count. Compared to the LEDR-based FPGA, the transistor count is reduced by 47% with almost the same throughput. In terms of power consumption, the proposed FPGA achieves the lowest power compared to the 4-phase-dual-rail-based and the LEDR-based FPGAs. Compared to the synchronous FPGA, the proposed FPGA has lower power consumption when the workload is below 35%.

This paper presents a design of an asynchronous peer-to-peer half-duplex/full-duplex-selectable data-transfer system on-chip interconnected. The data-transfer method between channels is based on a 1-phase signaling scheme realized by using multiple-valued current-mode (MVCM) circuits and encoding, which performs high-speed communication. A data transmission is selectable by adding a mode-detection circuit that observes data-transmission modes; full-duplex, half-duplex and standby modes. Especially, since current sources are completely cut off during the standby mode, the power dissipation can be greatly reduced. Moreover, both half-duplex and full-duplex communication can be realized by sharing a common circuit except a signal-level conversion circuit. The proposed interface is implemented using 0.18-µm CMOS, and its performance improvement is discussed in comparison with those of the other ordinary asynchronous methods.

This paper presents an asynchronous multiple-valued current-mode data-transfer controller chip based on a 1-phase dual-rail encoding technique. The proposed encoding technique enables "one-way delay" asynchronous data transfer because request and acknowledge signals can be transmitted simultaneously and valid states are detected by calculating the sum of dual-rail codewords. Since a key component, a current-to-voltage conversion circuit in a valid-state detector, is tuned so as to obtain a sufficient voltage range to improve switching speed of a comparator, signal detection can be performed quickly in spite of using 6-level signals. It is evaluated using HSPICE simulation with a 0.18-µm CMOS that the throughput of the proposed circuit based on the 1-phase dual-rail scheme attains 435 Mbps/wire which is 2.9 times faster than that of a CMOS circuit based on a conventional 4-phase dual-rail scheme. The test chip is fabricated, and the asynchronous data-transfer behavior of the proposed scheme is confirmed.

This paper presents an asynchronous data transfer scheme using 2-color 2-phase dual-rail encoding based on a differential operation and its circuit realization. The proposed encoding enables seamless asynchronous data transfer without inserting a spacer, because each logic value is represented by two kinds of codewords with dual-rail, called "color" data. Since the difference x-x between components of a codeword (x,x) becomes constant in every valid state, the data-arrival state can be detected by calculating the difference x-x. From the viewpoint of circuit implementation, during the state transition, since the dual-rail x and x are defined so as to transit differentially, the compatibility with a comparator using a differential amplifier becomes high, which results in reduction of the cycle time. It is evaluated using HSPICE simulation with a 0.18 µm CMOS technology that communication speed using the proposed dual-rail encoding becomes 1.4 times faster than that using conventional dual-rail encoding.