Design of standard-cell libraries for asynchronous circuits with the ASCEnD flow

Abstract

This work presents the ASCEnD flow, a design flow devised for the design of components required for the design of asynchronous systems using standard-cells. The flow is fully automated except for the layout generation step, and can be parameterized for any CMOS technology. It was employed in the design of a dedicated standard-cell library, which contains over five hundred components, for the STMicroelectronics 65 nm technology. This library supported implementation of different circuits, like network-on-chip routers and cryptographic cores.