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.
The latter can be downloaded and tried by anybody bold (or desperate)
enough to tread into the clockless (but not lawless) domain of
small-scale asynchronicity. The URL is http: //www.lsi. upc. esr j
ordic/petrify. We believe that asynchronous circuits are a wonderful
object, that aban- dons some of the almost militaristic law and order
that governs synchronous circuits, to improve in terms of simplicity,
energy efficiency and performance.