4 ms·

I think you are mostly right. They work at the fastest speed possible, the power usage is minimized by not doing anything when there is nothing to do. And from

by mjbs 11y ago

I think you are mostly right. They work at the fastest speed possible, the power usage is minimized by not doing anything when there is nothing to do. And from not having to propagate a clock signal all over the chip (maybe other reasons as well, I'm not an expert) If you are interested in real-world numbers, there is a comparison of between a GA144(an asynchronous multi-computer chip) and a MSP430(conventional low-power microprocessor) here: http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/WP003-100617-msp430.pdf http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/WP003-100... The GA144 can execute almost 4000x more instructions per second then MSP430 while consuming over 70x less power for the work done.

akira2501 11y ago
> The GA144 can execute almost 4000x more instructions per second then MSP430 while consuming over 70x less power for the work done. Yea, but the MSP430 actually has (a ton of) built in peripherals on it's own die, whereas the FA18 has none; so it's not the greatest comparison of J/MIPS.
- mjbs 11y ago
  Yes, this only compares energy consumption to help show the difference between synchronous(with the explicit goal energy efficiency) and async designs. I don't think peripherals has anything to do with this comparison. There are obviously a ton of reasons why a MSP430 might make more sense for a given application. The GA144 is so radically different that any comparison to a conventional computer is difficult.