Gradual Synchronization

System-on-Chip (SoC) designs using multiple clock domains are gaining importance due to clock distribution difficulties and increasing in-die process variations. For the same reasons more emerging SoC designs utilize clock-less domains for parts of the system. Both clock domain crossing and clocked/clockless domain crossing require a mechanism for inter-domain data transfer that re-synchronizes data to the clock domain of the receiver and avoids metastability. These synchronizers introduce added latency and reduce throughput. This paper proposes merging synchronization with computation in order to reduce latency while keeping throughput high. The method, called Gradual Synchronization (GSync), can reduce synchronization latency at maximum operating frequency by up to 37 percent, with even greater benefit at slower frequencies. We show the benefits of this approach in the scenario of an asynchronous NoC with synchronous end-points.