what is the parameter making it possible to settle to a steady state ?
A flip-flip has two stable states by design (due to positive feedback), so common sense rather suggests the opposite question: "How can the circuit stay in a metastable state (at least for finite time)?"
To try a mechanical analogy, it's a case of unstable equilibria where the logical level inside the memory circuit stays exactly in the middle between low and high. By the effect of circuit noise, the state flips fastly to either low or high.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_equilibrium
As SunnySkyguy explained, the metastable state will be usually triggered by a timing violation, e.g. the input signal of a D-FF is sampled exactly during an edge.
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what is the parameter making it possible to settle to a steady state ?
A flip-flip has two stable states by design, so common sense rather suggests the opposite question: "How can the circuit stay in a metastable state (at least for finite time)?"
To try a mechanical analogy, it's a case of unstable equilibria where logical level inside the memory circuit stays exactly in the middle between low and high level. By the effect of circuit noise, the state flips fastly to either low or high. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_equilibrium
As SunnySkyguy explained, the metastable state will be usually triggered by a timing violation, e.g. the input signal of a D-FF is sampled exactly during an edge.