Logically Determined Design: Clockless System Design with NULL Convention Logic

PREFACE

Complexity is a primary problem of contemporary digital system design. While manufacturing productivity is growing at 60% a year, design productivity is growing at 25% a year [41]. The industry is mobilizing with more complex tools and more complexly integrated tools. The problem of complexity is being conquered with complexity.

The possibility has not been considered that the practical complexity being encountered might be considerably greater than it needs to be. Where the accepted conceptual foundations are inadequate to the task, and have unnecessarily compounded the inherent complexity of a system, the complexity of practice might be significantly diminished with a slightly different conceptual orientation.

As this book shows, a Boolean logic expression requires a carefully coordinated supplementary expression of a critical time relationship. This extra expression of time and its coordination complicates the expression of a digital system far beyond its intrinsic logical complexity. If there were a logic sufficiently expressive to not require supplementary expression, it would be possible to simply and straightforwardly characterize a digital system and its behavior purely in terms of logical relationships, a logically determined system.

This book derives such a sufficiently ...