The one question I have about asynchronous chips since I studied them at my undergrad is: How does one sell them?
Selling a clocked processor is easy. One tests for a finite set of clock speeds, and marks by the fastest one that works. People buy the chip, and run at the tagged clock getting a predictable performance.
Now, make it a batch of asynchronous processors. Each chip you make will have a different performance - one will add some floats faster, another will fetch run faster (but only if the second bit of the address is set), while a third one will shine on integer addition, but completely suck at subtraction (due to a problem in a single transistor).
Selling a clocked processor is easy. One tests for a finite set of clock speeds, and marks by the fastest one that works. People buy the chip, and run at the tagged clock getting a predictable performance.
Now, make it a batch of asynchronous processors. Each chip you make will have a different performance - one will add some floats faster, another will fetch run faster (but only if the second bit of the address is set), while a third one will shine on integer addition, but completely suck at subtraction (due to a problem in a single transistor).
How does one tag those chips?