Design of an asynchronous digital system with B-ternary logic

Abstract

Some of the recent digital systems have a serious clock skew problem which comes from huge hardware implementations and high speed operations in VLSI's. To overcome this problem, clock distribution techniques and more notably, asynchronous system design methodologies, have been investigated. Since, the latest asynchronous digital systems use two-rail logic with two-phase data transfer manner, more than two-fold hardware is required in comparison with the synchronous system. In this article, we present design of asynchronous digital system which is based on B-ternary logic so as to process binary data. The system consists of data-path and its controller. We provide B-ternary two-phase binary data processing in the data-path and its control procedure, which is based on shake-hand protocol. The functional units of the system are presented, that is, ternary-in binary-out memory with request/acknowledge detector and control unit. These units are fabricated with ternary NOR, NAND, INVERTER gates and ternary Muller's C-elements.