This Asynchronous World
Essays dedicated to Alex Yakovlev on the occasion of his 60th birthday
Preface The world was in a very unstable state before this Festschrift. It waited, impatiently, for a lightest touch to explode with thousands of messages flown across the globe. The messages have turned into stories, and the stories have turned into this book.
As the reader is undoubtedly aware, this book is dedicated to Alex Yakovlev on the occasion of his 60th birthday, but let us not confuse the occasion with the underlying cause, which is: everybody loves Alex! His open mind, infectious enthusiasm, and positive thinking are driving the community, and we - his students, colleagues and friends - thank him here, in writing.
It is important to note that not everyone was able to complete their writing in time to be included into the first edition of the book. But fear not: as a self-appointed editor I declare this book fully asynchronous and unbounded. Let us celebrate the variability of the contributions with respect to their completion time (which is likely to follow Alex's favourite long-tail distribution), as well as their topic and length, and welcome new contributors, who will become part of future editions of the book1.
One of the many lessons I learned from Alex is that 'when' is just as important as 'what' and 'why'. We present our stories to Alex on his 60th anniversary; at best, I can only half understand the magnitude of this number in my 30s, therefore let me delegate the task of arguing that 60 is not just a number" to a philosopher in our community:
Professor Alex Yakovlev.
The days of our years are threescore years and ten. Respect our fore-fathers, as you become one. Marvel at their wise words and institutions; the giant shoulders to our improbable but superlative technical edifice. The next 40yrs will be as exciting as the last, but you will not lead its charge. Time now to set aside personal aspiration and firm the shoulder for those who follow. As life takes you to this new and scary place, remember you are not alone in the dark.
Though ships that pass, I am very pleased to have known, shared and laughed with you o'er years beyond number. And equally pleased to count you friend and colleague.
60 is not just a number; it's the end of childhood.
Ian Phillips (ARM)
I would like to thank everyone who contributed to this book, sent their words of encouragement and support, and helped with the editing. And with no further ado, ladies and gentlemen, I invite you to join Alex and turn this page.
Andrey Mokhov
July 2016, Newcastle
1 Please contact me by email andrey.mokhov@ncl.ac.uk if you would like to contribute a paper or for any other queries.
Download the complete book as a single PDF (2nd edition 14.8MB) (1st edition 10.8MB)
- 1st Edition Cover (PDF 138KB)
- Editor (2nd ed. PDF 25KB) (1st ed. PDF 25KB)
- Preface (2nd ed. PDF 97KB) (1st ed. PDF 97KB)
- Contents (2nd ed. PDF 59KB) (1st ed. PDF 59KB)
- Resilient bundled-data design: motivation, results to date, and remaining challenges (2nd ed. PDF 381KB) (1st ed. PDF 317KB)page 1
Peter Beerel and Ney Calazans - From an extended study of asynchronous controllers to system level design: application to the design of digital and analog interfaces (2nd ed. PDF 369KB) (1st ed. PDF 175KB)page 15
Edith Beigne, Pascal Vivet and Marc Renaudin - A community of asynchronauts: 20+ years of the ASYNC conference (2nd ed. PDF 3MB) (1st ed. PDF 2MB)page 22
Erik Brunvand - Investigating the side-effects of synchronisers on GALS circuits (2nd ed. PDF 354KB) (1st ed. PDF 319KB)page 59
Frank Burns - Analytical derivation of the reliability metric for digital circuits (2nd ed. PDF 444KB) (1st ed. PDF 482KB)page 73
Alex Bystrov and Mohamed Abufalgha - From digital timing diagrams to natural language and back (2nd ed. PDF 194KB) (1st ed. PDF 264KB)page 82
Josep Carmona - Are asynchronous ideas useful in FPGAs? (2nd ed. PDF 200KB) (1st ed. PDF 181KB)page 87
Peter Cheung - Event splitting: the way to survive when regions fail (2nd ed. PDF 286KB) (1st ed. PDF 241KB)page 96
Jordi Cortadella - The scientific craftsperson: beauty, engineering and the Bohemian researcher (2nd ed. PDF 244KB) (1st ed. PDF 193KB)page 107
Crescenzo D'Alessandro - Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try (2nd ed. PDF 145KB) (1st ed. PDF 141KB)page 118
Sohini Dasgupta and Praneet Bhatnagar - The story of the Amulet: a brief history of asynchronous events in Manchester (2nd ed. PDF 442KB) (1st ed. PDF 1MB)page 120
Doug Edwards et al. - Partially-ordered event-triggered systems (POETS) (2nd ed. PDF 1.1MB) (1st ed. PDF 843KB)page 131
Steve Furber and Andrew Brown - The effects of BTI aging on the susceptibility of on-chip communication schemes to soft errors in nano-scale CMOS technologies (2nd ed. PDF 483KB) (1st ed. PDF 362KB)page 150
Basel Halak - Proving timing properties with the Leibnizian time model (2nd ed. PDF 362KB) (1st ed. PDF 321KB)page 166
Alexei Iliasov - Regions of affine nets (2nd ed. PDF 271KB) (1st ed. PDF 229KB)page 182
Jetty Kleijn, Maciej Koutny and Marta Pietkiewicz-Koutny - Asynchronous design methods for dark silicon chips (2nd ed. PDF 148KB) (1st ed. PDF 136KB)page 192
Milos Krstic - State recovery of coarse-grained TMR circuits based on scan chains and clock gating (2nd ed. PDF 137KB) (1st ed. PDF 120KB)page 197
Jakob Lechner - Where the light is coming from (2nd ed. PDF 359KB) (1st ed. PDF 235KB)page 202
Terrence Mak - Reassessing the causes of asynchronous systems performance (2nd ed. PDF 168KB) (1st ed. PDF 73KB)page 205
Alain Martin - Asynchronous BDD-like structures (2nd ed. PDF 718KB) (1st ed. PDF 778KB)page 208
Oleg Mayevsky, Andrey Mokhov and Danil Sokolov - Asynchronous clocks (2nd ed. PDF 301KB) (1st ed. PDF 304KB)page 227
Simon Moore - Asynchronous circuit design and beyond (2nd ed. PDF 132KB) (1st ed. PDF 115KB)page 236
Chris Myers - Beyond carrying coal to Newcastle: dual citizen circuits (2nd ed. PDF 1.35MB) (1st ed. PDF 1.58MB)page 241
Marly Roncken et al. - Significance-driven computing for big data applications: from Buttery discussions to serious research (2nd ed. PDF 469KB) (1st ed. PDF 284KB)page 262
Rishad Shafik - Workcraft: ten years later (2nd ed. PDF 1.6MB) (1st ed. PDF 1.6MB)page 269
Danil Sokolov, Victor Khomenko and Andrey Mokhov - Fifty shades of synchrony (2nd ed. PDF 161KB) (1st ed. PDF 143KB)page 294
Andreas Steininger - Can metastable states be trapped? (2nd ed. PDF 148KB) (1st ed. PDF 117KB)page 301
Ghaith Tarawneh - Quantitative modelling of asynchronous variables (2nd ed. PDF 513KB) (1st ed. PDF 303KB)page 305
Fei Xia and Ian Clark - Working with Petri nets and asynchronous circuits (2nd ed. PDF 302KB) (1st ed. PDF 276KB)page 320
Tomohiro Yoneda - Opportunities and challenges for ultra-low voltage digital IC design (2nd ed. PDF 751KB) (1st ed. PDF 531KB)page 327
Jun Zhou - Performance Analysis and Behavior of Timed Concurrent Systems Using Petri-Net Models (2nd ed. PDF 451KB)page 337
Steven Nowick - Author list (2nd ed. PDF 39KB) (1st ed. PDF 39KB)
Publisher: Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK.
1st Edition ISBN: 978-0-7017-0257-1, Publication date: 20 July 2016
2nd Edition ISBN: 978-0-7017-0263-2, Publication date: 1 March 2017
Last modified 09/07/2018 by IGC