Abstrucf-Recent research has demonstrated that for certain types of applications like sampled audio systems, self-timed circuits can achieve very low power consumption, because unused circuit parts automatically turn into a stand-by mode. Additional savings may be obtained by combining the self-timed circuits with a mechanism that adaptively adjusts the supply voltage to the smallest possible, while maintaining the performance requirements. This paper describes such a mechanism, analyzes the possible power savings, and presents a demonstrator chip that has been fabricated and tested. The idea of voltage scaling has been used previously in synchronous circuits, and the contributions of the present paper are: 1) the combination of supply scaling and self-timed circuitry which has some unique advantages, and 2) the thorough analysis of the power savings that are possible using this technique.

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This paper describes a simple and powerful input language (intermediate format) for high level synthesis. The language belongs to the class of signalflow grapha. The Sprite Input Language (SIL) encompasyzs both the applicative constructs on which classical DSP languages like Silage are based, the functional constructs from hardware description languages like ELLA, and the operational constructs from sequential languages like Pascal and C. This is obtained b y means of the single token flow model and using sets instead of single values for modelling data. The language is suited for acting as intermediate language between the various specification languages and the silicon compilation system, as well as language backbone in the synthesis part of a silicon compiler.

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