Biological systems typically have two types of operation, regular and bursty, and manage to organise their operation in an energy efficient and robust way, which also supports natural tendency for survival. Regular activities take place all the time, and are meant to serve the needs of the overall system and are determined by the overall structure and dynamics of the system. Bursty activities are typically not those that are constantly triggered by normal periodic cycles of the system, but rather they are triggered by or in accordance with the needs to react to the demands of the environment. Why not to build a computer system in a similar fashion, such that a constantly active part has to be relatively slow and all the fast processing has to be done in specialised units, whose activation is bursty?

For more information visit the URL and find my recent technical memo on this …
http://async.org.uk/tech-memos/NCL-EECE-MSD-MEMO-2012-005.pdf