Estimation of energy consumption in speed-independent control circuits

We describe a technique to estimate the energy consumed by speed-independent asynchronous (clock-less) control circuits. Because speed-independent circuits are hazard-free under all possible combi- nations of gate delays+ we prove that an accurate estimate of their energy consumption is independent of relative component gate delays and can be determined by simulating only a small number of input patterns proportional to the size of the circuit's Signal Transition Graph specification. Specifically, we calculate the average energy per extemnl signal transition consumed by a circuit. This can be used to compare the energy consumption between two different circuit implementations of the same specification, to calculate average energy for a given high- level operation, and to provide average circuit power when combined with delay information,

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