Synchronization and Arbitration in GALS

Synchronizers and arbiters are important components of any Globally Asynchronous, Locally Synchronous network. They contribute to latency, because of the synchronization time required for reliability, and to metastability delay in the arbiters. Simple models of metastability have served us well up to now, but more recently work on the characterisation of deep metastability has demonstrated effects in commonly used components that may need to be taken into account.