saturating n bit counter

I have never heard the term "saturating counter" in some 40 years of working in electronics.

However, I might make a wild guess that a "staturating counter" is one which counts up to its maximum value, then stops, rather than "rolling over" to zero, and starting again.

Where did you see this term? Can you give any more information that might clarify the meaning?

The list shows a nice graycode start. Graycode changes one bit at a time, so to get a normal count, you need a translation table. The name should probably be graycode counter. Has often been used to minimize transmission errors.

well i encountered this countere while I was reading computer architecture's branch prediction strategy, even wiki mentions this counter...

that is what makes me confused ...what is so much special about this counter ??

It sounds, from context, that it's just an up-down counter that doesn't wrap. i.e., given "up" counts it counts to (say) 3, then won't count any more, but the next "down" count decrements it to 2, and so on, down to zero, where it won't decrement any more, but can still count up again.

Hope This Helps! Rich

Perhaps you are referring to a counter that is saturated by the incoming signals. An example is a scintillometer used to count gamma rays. If the count rate reaches a point at which the average time between counts equals the time it takes for the processor to count the signals the device is saturated. At hight count rates which fall below saturation level it is necessary to apply a mathematical correction to make up for the signals that are lost through overlap with a previous signal. I have forgotton the equation, but it is quite a simple one.