Asynchronous Design

Instructor 

Dr. Jia Di is the Head of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department and is the Rodger S. Kline Endowed Leadership Chair at the University of Arkansas.

Learning Objectives

Students taking this course will learn about the basic concept of quasi-delay insensitive (QDI) asynchronous logic circuits, which is fundamentally different from the prevailing synchronous counterpart. QDI asynchronous circuits offer many unique features in the areas of hardware security and reliability.

This micro-certificate course is organized into a set of units, described as follow:

• Unit 1: Overview of Asynchronous Circuits: basic concepts of QDI asynchronous circuits, NULL Convention Logic (NCL), and Multi-Threshold NULL Convention Logic (MTNCL).
• Unit 2: QDI Asynchronous Circuit Design: specific asynchronous circuit design for extreme temperature, radiation hardening, and side-channel attack resilience.
• Unit 3: Polymorphic Circuits for Hardware Security: as one of the unique features and applications of QDI asynchronous circuits in the area of hardware security, the concept of asynchronous polymorphic circuits, their logic gate and circuit design, and a case study are included in this unit.

Prerequisites:

• A background of digital logic circuit design and hardware security is required.

Biography

Dr. Jia Di received B.S. and M.S. degrees from Tsinghua University, China, in 1997 and 2000, respectively. He completed his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at the University of Central Florida in 2004. He joined the University of Arkansas in Fall 2004, where he is now the Head of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department and Rodger S. Kline Endowed Leadership Chair. His research area is asynchronous integrated circuit design and hardware security. His Trustable Logic Circuit Design Lab has been sponsored by various federal agencies and industry for over $35M in the past twenty years. Dr. Di has published two books and over 130 papers on technical journals and conferences. He also has 7 U.S. patents. Dr. Di is a senior member of IEEE, an eminent member of Tau Beta Pi, and an elected member of the National Academy of Inventors.