Anomalous Behavior of Synchronizer and Arbiter Circuits
T.J. Chaney, Charles E. Molnar · IEEE Transactions on Computers · 1973
Observations are shown of oscillatory and metastable behavior of flip-flops in response to logically undefined input conditions such as those that occur in synchronizers and arbiters. Significant systems failures have resulted from this fundamentally inescapable problem that is generally not appreciated by system designers and users.