Gray codes are useful to eliminate race conditions. We use them in chip design for FIFO pointers, for example where one end of the FIFO is in clock domain A, a

Gray codes are useful to eliminate race conditions. We use them in chip design for FIFO pointers, for example where one end of the FIFO is in clock domain A, and the other is in clock domain B. By using a gray code, only one signal toggles when a word is added or removed. A normal binary code would have a race between multiple signals toggling and when they showed up on across the boundary. You can convert between normal binary and gray codes with a tree of XOR gates.