The early 2000s period sees asynchronous design concepts being increasingly examined within mainstream VLSI toolchains, with an emphasis on high-level synthesis, semantics for asynchronous behavior, and patterns that tolerate clocking variability. Researchers pursue practical validation through integration with conventional CAD flows, aiming to lower adoption barriers and demonstrate viable design methodologies for industrial-scale circuits. Historical Significance: This era marks a decisive shift where asynchronous design transitions from theoretical inquiry to a practical design paradigm, catalyzing architectural patterns such as globally-asynchronous locally-synchronous interfaces and decoupled processing blocks, and laying groundwork for asynchronous decoding and strategy-driven processor components that influence subsequent work.