A standard-cell self-timed multiplier for energy and area critical synchronous systems

Abstract

This paper describes the design of a standard-cell self-timed multiplier for use in energy and area critical synchronous systems. The area of this multiplier is bounded by N rather than N/sup 2/ as seen in more traditional combinational parallel array designs, where N is the word size. Energy has a polynomial growth with word size, but has a coefficient that is much smaller than that seen in a combinational array design. Although the multiplier is self-timed, it can be embedded in a synchronous system appearing as a combinational element. This paper presents latency, area, and energy estimates for the multiplier implemented at various word sizes, and compares these numbers with a traditional combinational array multiplier. The self-timed multiplier uses 1/3 the energy and 1/7 the area of the combinational design for a 24-bit word size.