A Trace-Based Framework for Verifiable GALS Composition of IPs

Abstract

Composing intellectual property (IP) blocks running at different clock speeds over asynchronous communication links for a system-on-chip (SoC) design is a challenging task, especially for ensuring the functional correctness of the overall design. In this paper, we propose a trace-based framework that helps in identifying a class of IPs that can be composed to ldquocorrect-by-constructionrdquo globally asynchronous locally synchronous (GALS) designs, and their correctness is maintained with respect to their synchronous compositions. Our notion of correctness is latency equivalence. Latency equivalence means that the order of valid values is same on the corresponding signals in the synchronous as well as asynchronous compositions. We also provide a description of the protocol to be inserted between the IPs to obtain this equivalence.