Talk:Runt pulse

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Definition[edit]

As a former electronics engineer, I would have agreed with the present definition in this article, but I am troubled by the existence of conflicting information in some books. For example, Horowitz & Hill (Art of Electronics) and Micrel [1] draw it as a short pulse, with vertical edges, resulting from a race condition. I would call that (an idealised drawing of) a glitch. This [2] Lattice app note has a more detailed discussion, including pictures of real runt pulses, but the pulses typically achieve a valid logic level, if only for a short time.

The full story might be that there are two definitions:

Circuit designers use it to mean anything that won't reliably trigger the receiver, whether that's due to insufficient amplitude or insufficient width, or both.
Oscilloscope manufacturers use it to mean any pulse that crosses one user-defined voltage threshold but not the other. Some manufacturers also add a pulse width qualifier.

If anybody can find an authoritative definition then please let me know. I'm not suggesting we change the article unless there is a strong justification. --Heron (talk) 11:52, 18 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]