Title
An Experimental Study of Metastability-Induced Glitching Behavior
Abstract
The increasing number of clock domain crossings in modern systems-on-chip makes the careful consideration of metastability paramount. However, the manifestation of metastability at a flip-flop output is often unduly reduced to late transitions only, while glitches are hardly ever accounted for. In this paper we study the occurrence of glitches resulting from metastability in detail. To this end we propose a measurement circuit whose principle substantially differs from the conventional approach, and by that allows to reliably detect glitches. By means of experimental measurements on an FPGA target we can clearly identify late transitions, single glitches and double glitches as possible manifestations of metastability. Some of these behaviors are unexpected as they do not follow from the traditional modeling theory. We also study the dependence of metastable behavior on supply voltage. Beyond confirming that, as reported in previous literature, the metastable decay constant tau is voltage-dependent, we also produce strong evidence that the relative occurrence of glitches is not voltage-dependent.
Year
DOI
Venue
2019
10.1142/S0218126619400061
JOURNAL OF CIRCUITS SYSTEMS AND COMPUTERS
Keywords
Field
DocType
Metastability,time-to-digital converter,TDC,late transition detection,carry chain
Statistical physics,Computer science,Electronic engineering,Metastability
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
28
SUPnan
0218-1266
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
0
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Thomas Polzer1498.43
Florian Huemer232.46
Andreas Steininger330849.17