Performance evaluation of asynchronous, modular systems

Abstract A theoretical foundation is presented for a practical method of evaluating the expected performance of asynchronous, modular systems. Five basic types of asynchronous control modules are defined, which can be easily implemented using combinatorial logic. These modules can be used to control the execution of digital computations; and the result is a high degree of concurrency with true “speed-independence” (i.e. the correct operation of the system is not dependent on any relative timing assumptions). For such digital computations, methods are presented for estimating the expected execution time and throughput rate. Both deterministic and probabilistic models of computations are considered. For some restricted classes of computations, exact analytical solutions for the execution time are derived and for the general case, upper and lower bounds on the expected execution time are given.