Energy and performance models for clocked and asynchronous communication

Parameterized first-order models for throughput, energy, and bandwidth are presented in this paper. Models are developed for many common pipeline methodologies, including clocked flopped, clocked time-borrowing latch protocols, asynchronous two-cycle, four-cycle, delay-insensitive, and source synchronous. The paper focuses on communication costs which have the potential to throttle design performance as scaling continues. The models can also be applied to logic. The equations share common parameters to allow apples-to-apples comparisons against different design targets and pipeline methodologies. By applying the parameters to various design targets, one can determine when unclocked communication is superior at the physical level to clocked communication in terms of energy for a given bandwidth. Comparisons between protocols at fixed targets also allow designers to understand tradeoffs between implementations that have a varying degree of timing assumptions and design requirements.