Interacting self-timed pipelines and elementary coupling control modules

The self-timed pipeline (STP) is one of the most promising VLSI/SoC architectures. It achieves efficient utilization of tens of billions of transistors, consumes ultra low power, and is easy-to-design because of its signal integrity and low electro-magnetic interference. These basic features of the STP have been proven by the development of self-timed data-driven multimedia processors, DDMP's. This paper proposes a novel scheme of interacting self-timed (clockless) pipelines by which the various distributed and interconnected pipelines can achieve highly functional stream processing in future giga-transistor chips. The paper also proposes a set of elementary coupling control modules that facilitate various combinations of flow-thru processing between pipelines, and then discusses the practicality of the proposed scheme through the LSI design of application modules such as a priority-based queue, a mutual interconnection network, and a pipelined sorter.