A high-speed asynchronous decompression circuit for variable-length-coded data

Abstract From the Canadian patent

There is provided an architecture and implementation of a high-speed decompression, engine for variable-length-coded data such as Huffman-coded data. The engine is particularly, targeted to processors where embedded programs are stored in compressed form and, decompressed at runtime during instruction cache refill. The decompression engine uses a, unique asynchronous variable decompression rate architecture to process variable-length-coded, instructions. The resulting circuit is significantly smaller than comparable synchronous decoders, yet has a higher throughput rate than almost all existing designs.