This book is the result of a long friendship, of a broad international co­ operation, and of a bold dream. It is the summary of work carried out by the authors, and several other wonderful people, during more than 15 years, across 3 continents, in the course of countless meetings, workshops and discus­ sions. It shows that neither language nor distance can be an obstacle to close scientific cooperation, when there is unity of goals and true collaboration. When we started, we had very different approaches to handling the mys­ terious, almost magical world of asynchronous circuits. Some were more theo­ retical, some were closer to physical reality, some were driven mostly by design needs. In the end, we all shared the same belief that true Electronic Design Automation research must be solidly grounded in formal models, practically minded to avoid excessive complexity, and tested "in the field" in the form of experimental tools. The results are this book, and the CAD tool petrify.

Although asynchronous circuits date back to the early 1950s most of the digital circuits in use today are synchronous because, traditionally, asynchronous circuits have been viewed as difficult to understand and design. In recent years, however, there has been a great surge of interest in asynchronous circuits, largely through the development of new asynchronous design methodologies.

This book emerged from lecture notes of a course taught in the second year to students of Computer Science at the Federal Institute of Tech­ nology, Zurich. The topic of hardware design plays a relatively minor role in Compu­ ter Science curricula at many universities. Most courses concentrate on the various aspects of theory, software, and of information sys­ tems. Students therefore obtain few opportunities to deal with con­ crete engineering problems and physical devices. We consider this as rather unfortunate, particularly for technical universities. As a result, we observe a growing gap between interest in and understanding of design issues involving not only software but also hardware and inter­ faces. This is regrettable at a time when new and advanced solutions to many problems are often crucially influenced by recent hardware de­ velopments, at a time when the engineer needs to be competent in both software and hardware issues in order to fmd an optimally inte­ grated, competitive solution. It turns out that the hesitation of many students in Computer Science to take an active interest in hardware - his or her daily tool! - does not only stem from a preference of "clean", abstract concepts with a corre­ sponding distaste for dealing with concrete components, construction techniques, and the "dirty" realities inflicted by nature, but also stems from the lack of a bridge between the two realms.

This book ?nds new things to do with an old idea. The proofs-as-programs paradigm constitutes a set of approaches to developing programs from proofs in constructive logic. It has been over thirty years since the paradigm was ?rst conceived. At that time, there was a belief that proofs-as-programs had the - tential for practical application to semi-automated software development. I- tial applications were mostly concerned with ?ne-grain, mathematical program synthesis. For various reasons, research interest in the area eventually tended toward more theoretic issues of constructive logic and type theory. However, in recent years, the situation has become more balanced, and there is increasingly active research in applying constructive techniques to industrial-scale, complex software engineering problems. Thismonographdetailsseveralimportantadvancesinthisdirectionofpr- tical proofs-as-programs. One of the central themes of the book is a general, abstract framework for developing new systems of program synthesis by adapting proofs-as-programs to new contexts.

Design and optimization of integrated circuits are essential to the creation of new semiconductor chips, and physical optimizations are becoming more prominent as a result of semiconductor scaling. Modern chip design has become so complex that it is largely performed by specialized software, which is frequently updated to address advances in semiconductor technologies and increased problem complexities. A user of such software needs a high-level understanding of the underlying mathematical models and algorithms. On the other hand, a developer of such software must have a keen understanding of computer science aspects, including algorithmic performance bottlenecks and how various algorithms operate and interact.

Functional Design Errors in Digital Circuits Diagnosis covers a wide spectrum of innovative methods to automate the debugging process throughout the design flow: from Register-Transfer Level (RTL) all the way to the silicon die. In particular, this book describes: (1) techniques for bug trace minimization that simplify debugging; (2) an RTL error diagnosis method that identifies the root cause of errors directly; (3) a counterexample-guided error-repair framework to automatically fix errors in gate-level and RTL designs; (4) a symmetry-based rewiring technology for fixing electrical errors; (5) an incremental verification system for physical synthesis; and (6) an integrated framework for post-silicon debugging and layout repair. The solutions provided in this book can greatly reduce debugging effort, enhance design quality, and ultimately enable the design and manufacture of more reliable electronic devices.

Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are on the verge of revolutionizing digital signal processing. Novel FPGA families are replacing ASICs and PDSPs for front end digital signal processing algorithms more and more. The efficient implementation of these algorithms is the main goal of this book. It starts with an overview of today's FPGA technology, devices, and tools for designing state-of-the-art DSP systems. A case study in the first chapter is the basis for more than 30 design examples. The following chapters deal with computer arithmetic concepts, theory and the implementation of FIR and IIR filters, multirate digital signal processing systems, DFT and FFT algorithms, and advanced algorithms with high future potential. Each chapter contains exercises. The VERILOG source code and a glossary are given in the appendices. The accompanying CD-ROM contains the examples in VHDL and Verilog code as well as the newest Altera "Baseline" software.

This textbook introduces readers to the fundamental hardware used in modern computers. The only pre-requisite is algebra, so it can be taken by college freshman or sophomore students or even used in Advanced Placement courses in high school. This book presents both the classical approach to digital system design (i.e., pen and paper) in addition to the modern hardware description language (HDL) design approach (computer-based). This textbook enables readers to design digital systems using the modern HDL approach while ensuring they have a solid foundation of knowledge of the underlying hardware and theory of their designs.

This textbook introduces readers to the fundamental hardware used in modern computers. The only pre-requisite is algebra, so it can be taken by college freshman or sophomore students or even used in Advanced Placement courses in high school. This book presents both the classical approach to digital system design (i.e., pen and paper) in addition to the modern hardware description language (HDL) design approach (computer-based). This textbook enables readers to design digital systems using the modern HDL approach while ensuring they have a solid foundation of knowledge of the underlying hardware and theory of their designs.

Fault-tolerance in integrated circuits is not an exclusive concern regarding space designers or highly-reliable application engineers. Rather, designers of next generation products must cope with reduced margin noises due to technological advances. The continuous evolution of the fabrication technology process of semiconductor components, in terms of transistor geometry shrinking, power supply, speed, and logic density, has significantly reduced the reliability of very deep submicron integrated circuits, in face of the various internal and external sources of noise. The very popular Field Programmable Gate Arrays, customizable by SRAM cells, are a consequence of the integrated circuit evolution with millions of memory cells to implement the logic, embedded memories, routing, and more recently with embedded microprocessors cores.

Active Objects are a programming paradigm that supports a non-competitive, data-driven concurrency model. This renders active object languages to be well-suited for simulation, data race-free programming, and formal verification. Concepts from active objects made their way into languages such as Rust, ABS, Akka, JavaScript, and Go. This is the first comprehensive state-of-art overview on the subject, the invited contributions are written by experts in the areas of distributed systems, formal methods, and programming languages.

There are three outstanding points of this book. First: for the first time, a collective point of view on the role of artificial intelligence paradigm in logic design is introduced. Second, the book reveals new horizons of logic design tools on the technologies of the near future. Finally, the contributors of the book are twenty recognizable leaders in the field from the seven research centres. The chapters of the book have been carefully reviewed by equally qualified experts. All contributors are experienced in practical electronic design and in teaching engineering courses. Thus, the book's style is accessible to graduate students, practical engineers and researchers.