Investigating the FIFO design styles based on the Balsa synthesis system

In this paper, three asynchronous FIFO design styles, linear, square, and cubic, are investigated based on the Balsa synthesis system. These styles are designed with the key difference being the path by which data travels through the FIFO. The design with shorter path should result in lower latency and higher throughput, but will require more complicated control. All the FIFOs are designed using the Balsa language, and the area cost and simulation time are compared for each FIFO with varying sizes. A tool is also presented for automatic generation of Balsa code for each FIFO.