Patent ID: 7737749

Claim:
A latch for an elastic pipeline, comprising: a control input for configuring a latch component into a repeater state or a latch state; a drive component responsive to the control input and for driving an input signal through as an output signal, wherein a signal path between an input signal to the output signal propagates through less than three inverter stages in both the repeater state and the latch state; a reset threshold component coupled to the drive component for inhibiting oscillation of the drive component; said latch component for passing a present state of the input signal to the output signal when configured as the repeater state and for maintaining a previous state of the output signal during transitions of a clock signal when configured as the latch state; and a plurality of safe mode switches coupled to the reset threshold component and a pulse width/inhibit component and configured to inactivate the reset threshold component and the pulse width/inhibit component when a safe mode is activated.