A Partitioned Cellular Automaton Approach for Efficient Implementation of Asynchronous Circuits

Asynchronous cellular automata (ACAs) have much promise as architectures for future computers with molecular-scale devices, since they are less likely to suffer from clock-related problems (i.e. wiring overhead, heat dissipation, etc.) and they are suitable for bottom-up manufacturing techniques due to their homogeneous structures. Computation on ACA can be accomplished by designing configurations on the cell space such that their evolutions emulate the operations of asynchronous circuits. However, these ACA models still require tens of transition rules, which may seem too high for efficient physical realizations. In this paper, we present a new cellular automaton in which each cell comprises a group of simple sub-cells that are locally coupled with each other. Based upon an effective set of asynchronous primitive operators, this novel ACA can be used to construct any arbitrary logic circuit, while the number of transition rules is less than half the number in previous ACA models.