A survey of theory and practice in compositional design of asynchronous circuits

There are several methods of describing systems in a modular fashion. These descriptions may represent a system in one of several ways, for example in a text form or as a graph. By using a modular representation, a large system can be split into multiple smaller sections, which can make operations such as verification of a system simpler and quicker. Multiple methods of designing asynchronous circuits also exist, and each one has benefits for designing a certain type of asynchronous circuits, and therefore has several pitfalls for designing another type of circuit. Concepts [32] are a method of describing signal interactions in an asynchronous system, which can then be composed with other concepts, which produce Signal Transition Graphs. Multiple graphs can then be combined and used to produce a full specification of an asynchronous system. This method uses a modular representation of systems to help in the design of an asynchronous system. This document discusses multiple methods of modular description and existing asynchronous design methods, including concepts, and compares these based on several metrics, in an attempt to see what the features of each method are, and how concepts fit in, and what further features could be added to concepts in the future. Jonny Beaumont: A survey of theory and practice in compositional design of asynchronous circuits