Metastability in Better-Than-Worst-Case Designs

Better-Than-Worst-Case-Designs use timing speculation to run with a cycle period faster than the one required for worst-case conditions. This speculation may produce timing violations and metastability that result in failures and non-deterministic timing behavior. The effects of these phenomena are not always well understood by designers and researchers in this area. This paper analyzes the impact of timing speculation and the reasons why it is difficult to adopt this paradigm in industrial designs.