Talk:Runt pulse

Definition
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 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 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:
 * 1) 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.
 * 2) 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)