Low Latency High Throughout Circular Asynchronous FIFO

Abstract

This paper describes a circular first in first out (FIFO) and its protocols which have a very low latency while still maintaining high throughput. Unlike the existing serial FIFOs based on asynchronous micropipelines, this FIFO's cells communicate directly with the input and output ports through a common bus, which effectively eliminates the data movement from the input port to the output port, thereby reducing the latency and the power consumption. Furthermore, the latency does not increase with the number of FIFO stages. Single-track asynchronous protocols are used to simplify the FIFO controller design, with only three C-gates needed in each cell controller, which substantially reduces the area. Simulations with the TSMC 0.25 μm CMOS logic process show that the latency of the 4-stage FIFO is less than 581 ps and the throughput is higher than 2.2 GHz.