The University of Manchester (UK)

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The Advanced Processor Technologies (APT) group in the School of Computer Science has made notable contributions to the development of asynchronous microprocessors, synthesis tools for asynchronous systems, chip multiprocessor architectures for the efficient support of Java virtual machines, and asynchronous signal processing systems. Funding has been secured both from the UK EPSRC and from various EU initiatives. Highlights of our work so far include:

Amulet1 - developed within the OMI-MAP project (Esprit 5386) - was the first asynchronous implementation of a full commercial microprocessor architecture. This achievement was recognised with a 1995 BCS Award, and in the same year the Computing IT Gold Award for technology transfer (awarded jointly with ARM Limited).

Amulet2e - developed within the OMI-DE/ARM project (Esprit 6909) - is an asynchronous embedded controller with performance and power-efficiency comparable with comparable clocked ARM processors exhibiting unique electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) properties and a true zero power idle mode.

Amulet3 - developed within the OMI-DE2 and OMI-ATOM projects (ESPRIT 20452 & 23031) is a flexible high-performance asynchronous embedded subsystem for telecommunications. It was co-developed with Hagenuk GmbH.

SPA - developed within the G3Card project (IST-199-13515) - was intended to evaluate the suitability of asynchronous processors to enhance the security of the device through its intrinsic resistance to power analysis and EMI attacks. The ARM compatible asynchronous processor was successfully synthesised entirely by the Balsa asynchronous synthesis system developed within the group.

ASPIDA - produced an asynchronous open-source DLX processor - (IST-2002-37796). The demonstrator chip included a DI-encoded network-on-chip (CHAIN) which worked on first silicon

Other EU funded projects in which the APT group has played a major part are: OMI-HORN (ESPRIT 7249), ExACT (ESPRIT 6143), PREST (ESPRIT 25242), ACiD1, 2, 3 (IST-1999-29119).

Balsa is the leading open source high-level asynchronous system synthesis tool and has successfully been used for the DMA controller in the Amulet3 project and also synthesised the entire SPA microprocessor.

The group has regularly received substantial funding from the UK research body, EPSRC. The depth of its research expertise has been recognised by the award of a Platform grant followed by a prestigious 5 year Portfolio Partnership grant.

Key Persons in the Project

Dr. Doug Edwards, Senior Lecturer in the School of Computer Science, heads the work on Balsa, the leading publicly available system for the synthesis of large-scale asynchronous circuits. Dr. Edwards is one of a team of academics that was awarded a EPSRC Portfolio Partnership award (GR/S61270/01). Dr. Edwards is an author of over 50 papers and has been a co-investigator in 10 EPSRC funded projects. The review of the EPSRC funded work on Balsa rated the research "Internationally Leading". He headed the Manchester work on the ACiD, ExACT, and ASPIDA EU-funded research projects. Previous research interests have included Silicon Zinc Sulphide heterojunctions, high speed local area networks, hardware accelerators for CAD, formal verification of hardware. Current research interests include synthesis systems for asynchronous circuits, GALS and networks-on-chip for reconfigurable gate arrays.

Lilian Janin is a Research Associate in the School of Computer Science at the University of Manchester, where he received his Ph.D. degree in 2004. His research interests are in simulation and visualization of large asynchronous systems. He has been working since 2000 on the asynchronous Balsa framework, and more specifically on the asynchronous simulator and visualization system. For the last few years, his work was mainly focused on a co-simulation debugging environment for heterogeneous synchronous-asynchronous circuits.