🚀 go-pugleaf

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO
SEMINAR ACTIVITIES

SYSTEMS SEMINAR

                    - Tuesday, March 28, 1989

Dr.  Charles E. Molnar, of the Institute for Biomedical
Computing  at  Washington University in St. Louis, will
speak   on   ``Metastability   in   Synchronizers   and
Arbiters''.

TIME:                3:30 PM

ROOM:                DC 1304

ABSTRACT

The phenomenon of metastability was recognized as early
as  1950,  but  has been generally ignored or denied by
most  textbooks  and designers of circuits and systems.
The  problem  arises  when  one attempts to communicate
between  systems  that  do  not  share  a  common  time
reference  or  clock, and manifests itself as a circuit
behavior  that  is  not  representable in most abstract
discrete   models  for  computer  system  behavior.  An
explanation  of  the  phenomenon,  and  the reasons for
believing  that  it is fundamental and inescapable will
be  presented.   Some  examples  of the system problems
that   it   has  caused,  and  some  of  the  ingenious
rationalizations  for  its non-existence will be given.
Recent  noise-free  and  noisy  models  for  metastable
circuit  behavior,  and  a  method  for deriving system
failure  probabilities,  will be described.  An example
of   the   difficulties  of  simulation  of  metastable
behavior  using  SPICE  will be given, with methods for
obtaining  good  estimates of circuit performance using
simulation  models.  Methods for avoiding or mitigating
the effects of metastable behavior will be discussed.
-- 
Violet R. Syrotiuk     |                                   vrsyrotiuk@water.uucp
Computer Science Dept. |                                watmath!water!vrsyrotiuk
University of Waterloo |                           vrsyrotiuk@water.uwaterloo.ca
Waterloo, ON  N2L 3G1  |                 vrsyrotiuk@water.waterloo.edu (or .cdn)