Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Microprocessors are now common components in many electronic devices, from simple microwave ovens to the most potent computer. From this ubiquitous computerization, two major fields of application stand out with remarkable growth rates: mobile electronic devices and data centers. Although physically afar from each other, their expansion are linked in a push-pull momentum. More mobile computing power enables more advanced applications which, in-turn, demands larger data centers equipped with more and more servers. Moreover, advanced mobile applications are powerful market growth drivers for electronic device manufacturers and data service providers.In the upward spiral towards ever increasing processing power, one must not forget about the impact on energy requirement. For a mobile device or a server farm, the power/energy consumption of processing units has become a critical issue. As an intrinsic consequence for mobile devices, energy consumption is limited by the battery capacities. Hence, the less energy is consumed by a portable device, the longer will be its autonomy. On the data center side, when thousands of computers are linked together in a server warehouse, even a little saving on power for a single processor will result in a major gain with the economies of scale. A constant competition to get more energy efficient processing devices is at the center of most current silicon designs. The hereby proposed project stands at the crossroad between more processing power and energy consumption.By leveraging asynchronous and self-timed integrated circuit design, we intend to develop a new generation of microprocessors granted with enhanced computing capabilities and lower energy requirements.