Synchronization and Arbitration in Digital Systems

David Kinniment is Professor Emeritus at the University of Newcastle, having been Professor of Electronics in the Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering from 1979 until 1998. He currently works part time, mainly on asynchronous design and design methodology, in the Computer Science Department. He is very experienced in the measurement and characterization of synchronization and arbitration in digital systems, having been one of the leading researchers in the world in this area of digital design since the 1970s. He wrote the first paper to describe the measurement of mean time between failures (in other words, realiability) for a metastable device in 1972 and this year (2006) he won the best paper award at the ASYNC 2006 conference. Along with this, he has written a number of published journal articles on the topic, and has also collaborated with industry (most recently INTEL) to develop efficient digital hardware design methods, and ways of ensuring reliability in digital processors.