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ASYNC 2026 Summer School

The 3rd edition of the ASYNC Summer school will be co-located directly before the conference (June 1-2 2026) as a hybrid event at DTU in Lyngby, Denmark.

The goal of the school is to teach asynchronous chip design to students and practitioners interested in digital hardware design. Participants will learn how to design asynchronous circuits at the behavioral level, gate level, and physical design level using design automation tools.

Registration

Please sign up here, the online participation is free, onsite fee is 450 DKK (~60 EUR) and covers lunch, drinks and snacks during the summer school.

For online participation you will receive a zoom link a few days before the summer school and for the onsite location information please see the ASYNC Symposium website

Design tools

ACT tools. We have pre-installed tools in a multi-platform Docker image (linux/arm64 and linux/amd64) using Ubuntu Linux that is accessible through docker hub. The standard way we use this image is detailed here. You can also install the ACT tools from source using the instructions on Github.1) Documentation is available on this site as well.

Workcraft. Packages for Workcraft are available on Github, with additional documentation available as well.

Sessions

The schedule for the two days will follow the template of the first day of the program. We will start at 9am and conclude at 4:30pm. All times are local time in Denmark.

Session 1: Behavioral design

Monday, June 1 morning

This session covers the abstractions used for the behavioral description of asynchronous circuits, and how one can use simulation at this level of abstraction to test the functionality of an asynchronous design.

Time Topic Speaker(s) Video
9:00 AM Welcome
9:10 AM Summer school overview Rajit Manohar mp4
9:30 AM Behavioral description: message-passing Rajit Manohar mp4
10:45 AM Coffee break
11:00 AM Dataflow models Jens Sparsø mp4
12:10 PM Lunch break

Session 2: From Behavior to gates

Monday, June 1 afternoon

This session covers systematic techniques to translate the detailed signal-level description of an asynchronous computation into gates.

Time Topic Speaker(s) Video
1:10 PM Handshake protocols Rajit Manohar mp4
1:30 PM Gate-level models Rajit Manohar mp4
1:45 PM From dataflow to gates Montek Singh mp4
2:45 PM From CHP to gates Rajit Manohar mp4
3:00 PM Coffee break
3:30 PM Non-determinism Rajit Manohar mp4
4:30 PM Social Event with Pizza and Drinks at DTU

Examples from day 1: tar.gz

Session 3: Physical design

Tuesday, June 2 morning

This session covers mapping a gate-level description of a design into a physical implementation.

Time Topic Speaker(s) Video
9:00 AM Timing constraints Rajit Manohar mp4
9:30 AM ASIC implementation flow I Ole Richter & Rajit Manohar mp4
10:45 AM Coffee break
11:00 AM ASIC implementation flow II (pdf cont.) Ole Richter & Rajit Manohar mp4
12:10 PM Lunch break

Session 4: Customizing Circuits

Tuesday, June 2 afternoon

We will include special topics, and close out with a social event in the evening.

Time Topic Speaker(s) Video
1:10 PM Petri net primer Alex Yakovlev mp4
2:00 PM Controller design using Petri nets Alex Yakovlev video as above, starts at 1:15:56
3:00 PM Coffee break
3:30 PM Custom circuit implementation Rajit Manohar (live demo) mp4
4:30 PM End of day

Examples from day 2: day2.tar.gz

1)
In addition to the ACT tools, the docker image includes binaries for magic, irsim, yosys, and Xyce (Xyce installed using a Github repo that includes dependencies), and SPICE models and an irsim parameter file for the Skywater 130 open-source PDK.