Asynchronous high speed processor having high speed memories with domino circuits contained therein

Claim 1

An asynchronous high speed processor system comprising: high speed processor means for executing each program instruction in a single fetch cycle; an instruction means for communicating instructions to the high speed processor means; a data memory for communicating data to the high speed processor means; the high speed processor means includes: an arithmetic logic unit (ALU) for performing arithmetic and logic operations upon the data provided by the data memory means under control of instructions from the instruction memory means, said arithmetic logic unit (ALU) requires two operands for operation in a single fetch cycle, the high speed processor means further includes; first memory means connected to said ALU so as to communicate the first operand, and second memory means connected to said ALU so as to communicate the second operand; and means for prefetching an instruction from the instruction memory means for an operation of the arithmetic logic unit upon data provided by the data memory means and wherein the means for prefetching comprises a memory having a plurality of stages for decoding the prefectched instruction and said memory further includes a domino circuit means responsive to a signal from the high speed processor means for providing a plurality of completion pulses indicating the availability of the prefecteched instruction for use by said ALU with each single completion pulse representative of the maximum signal propagation time delay through a predetermined single stage of the memory.