On 8/11/2006 at 12:58 PM Brent Hilpert wrote:
Such all started with ENIAC didn't it?, which
- based on what I've been
able to find/read - could be described as an async design.
Was async still being discussed in the 60's?
I think it's never really gone away. There may still be some multiplier
chips kicking around that have a "done" flag. In theory, async affords the
lowest power consumption and the highest speed, since things change state
only when required to do so by the data flowing through them, instead of
everytime the clock changes state. The gotcha is that the synchronizing
logic takes up its own power.