General theory of metastable operation

Authors	Leonard R. Marino
Editors
Type	article
Year	1981
Citekey	`marino1981general`

Published in	IEEE Transactions on Computers
Publisher	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Volume	C-30
Issue	2
Pages	107--115

DOI	10.1109/tc.1981.6312173
OpenAlex	W1975638748
ISSN	0018-9340

Landing page	https://doi.org/10.1109/tc.1981.6312173

Copy	No open copy on any host this account may ask. IEEE Transactions on Computers C-30(2):107--115, February 1981; the only address is the doi.org landing page, and ieeexplore.ieee.org is not in hosts. IEEE deposits nothing openly from 1981, and unlike the Cohn, Barrett and Basin cases there is no institutional predecessor to fall back on: Marino was at San Diego State and this is a journal paper rather than a laboratory report, so the technical-report route that produced cohn1987proof, barrett1987formal and basin1989verification does not exist here. The substance is not lost. friedrichs2018metastabilitycontaining, which is held in full and is open under CC BY 3.0, states the result it depends on and cites this paper for it: that no physical implementation of a non-trivial digital circuit can deterministically avoid, resolve, or detect metastability. Their own model is validated against it -- the paper says explicitly that it 'passes the test of reproducing Marino's impossibility results'. So a reader can learn what the theorem says, and what it forbids, from a held copy; what is missing is the proof.

Copy

No open copy on any host this account may ask. IEEE Transactions on Computers C-30(2):107--115, February 1981; the only address is the doi.org landing page, and ieeexplore.ieee.org is not in hosts. IEEE deposits nothing openly from 1981, and unlike the Cohn, Barrett and Basin cases there is no institutional predecessor to fall back on: Marino was at San Diego State and this is a journal paper rather than a laboratory report, so the technical-report route that produced cohn1987proof, barrett1987formal and basin1989verification does not exist here. The substance is not lost. friedrichs2018metastabilitycontaining, which is held in full and is open under CC BY 3.0, states the result it depends on and cites this paper for it: that no physical implementation of a non-trivial digital circuit can deterministically avoid, resolve, or detect metastability. Their own model is validated against it -- the paper says explicitly that it 'passes the test of reproducing Marino's impossibility results'. So a reader can learn what the theorem says, and what it forbids, from a held copy; what is missing is the proof.

Metastable operation is a fundamental phenomenon of sequential networks that process asynchronous inputs. Nevertheless, because of its subtle nature and the relatively low probability of its occurrence in conventional systems, this phenomenon is neither well understood nor widely appreciated. With continuing advances in digital technology, however, there is a growing interest in large-scale highly parallel systems. Such systems are likely to involve numerous high-frequency asynchronous interactions, which may result in frequent measures to prevent such failures. In recent years, a number of researchers have been working with some success to develop techniques for dealing with this failure mode. The purpose of this paper is to present a comprehensive theory of metastable operation that may lead to a better understanding of this phenomenon and provide theoretical support for further work in this area.

How it got here	agent via crossref
Added	2026-09-15 20:52 UTC
Approved by	a person 2026-09-15 21:07 UTC

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@article{marino1981general,
  title        = {General theory of metastable operation},
  author       = {Leonard R. Marino},
  year         = {1981},
  journal      = {IEEE Transactions on Computers},
  publisher    = {Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)},
  volume       = {C-30},
  number       = {2},
  pages        = {107--115},
  issn         = {0018-9340},
  doi          = {10.1109/tc.1981.6312173},
}

This record lives at https://refs.drheap.org/marino1981general/ and will keep doing so.

General theory of metastable operation

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