Automatic synthesis of fast compact self-timed control circuits

We present a tool called MEAT which has been designed to automatically synthesize transistor level. CMOS, self-timed control circuits. MEAT has been used to specify and synthesize self-timed circuits for a fully self-timed 300,000 transistor communication coprocessor. The design is specified using finite state machines which permit burst-mode inputs. Burst-mode is a limited form of MIC (multiple input change) signalling. The primary goal of MEAT is to produce fast and compact circuits. In order to achieve this goal, MEAT implementations permit timing assumption which can by verifiably supported at the physical implementation level, and result in significant improvements in speed and area of the design. Since MEAT has been used for large designs, we have also been forced to make the algorithms efficient. The result is a tool which is efficient, easy to use by today's hardware designers since the specification is based on the commonly used finite state machine control model, and synthesize CMOS transistor implementations that are self-timed, fast and compact. The paper presents a description of the tool, the nature of the algorithms used, and examples of its use.