FHSST Physics/Electronics/Logical Gates

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Electronic Logic Gates[edit]

The simplest form of electronic logic is diode logic (DL). This allows AND and OR gates to be built, but not inverters, and so is an incomplete form of logic. To built a complete logic system, valves or transistors can be used. The simplest family of logic gates using bipolar transistors is called resistor-transistor logic, or RTL. Unlike diode logic gates, RTL gates can be cascaded indefinitely to produce more complex logic functions. These gates were used in early integrated circuits. For higher speed, the resistors used in RTL were replaced by diodes, leading to diode-transistor logic, or DTL. It was then discovered that one transistor could do the job of two diodes in the space of one diode, so transistor-transistor logic, or TTL, was created. In some types of chip, to reduce size and power consumption still further, the bipolar transistors were replaced with complementary field-effect transistors (MOSFETs), resulting in complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) logic.

For small-scale logic, designers now use prefabricated logic gates from families of devices such as the TTL 7400 series invented by Texas Instruments and the CMOS 4000 series invented by RCA, and their more recent descendants. These devices usually contain transistors with multiple emitters, used to implement the AND function, which are not available as separate components. Increasingly, these fixed-function logic gates are being replaced by programmable logic devices, which allow designers to pack a huge number of mixed logic gates into a single integrated circuit.


Another important advantage of standardised semiconductor logic gates, such as the 7400 and 4000 families, is that they are cascadable. This means that the output of one gate can be wired to the inputs of one or several other gates, and so on ad infinitum, enabling the construction of circuits of arbitrary complexity without requiring the designer to understand the internal workings of the gates.

In practice, the output of one gate can only drive a finite number of inputs to other gates, a number called the 'fanout limit', but this limit is rarely reached in the newer CMOS logic circuits, as compared to TTL circuits. Also, there is always a delay, called the 'propagation delay', from a change an input of a gate to the corresponding change in its output. When gates are cascaded, the total propagation delay is approximately the sum of the individual delays, an effect which can become a problem in high-speed circuits.

The US symbol for an AND gate is: AND symbol and the IEC symbol is AND symbol.

The US circuit symbol for an OR gate is: OR symbol and the IEC symbol is: OR symbol.

The US circuit symbol for a NOT gate is: NOT symbol and the IEC symbol is: NOT symbol.

In electronics a NOT gate is more commonly called an inverter. The circle on the symbol is called a bubble, and is generally used in circuit diagrams to indicate an inverted input or output.

The US circuit symbol for a NAND gate is: NAND symbol and the IEC symbol is: NAND symbol.

The US circuit symbol for a NOR gate is: NOR symbol and the IEC symbol is: NOR symbol.

In practice, the cheapest gate to manufacture is usually the NAND gate. Additionally, Charles Peirce showed that NAND gates alone (as well as NOR gates alone) can be used to reproduce all the other logic gates.

Two more gates are the exclusive-OR or XOR function and its inverse, exclusive-NOR or XNOR. Exclusive-OR is true only when exactly one of its inputs is true. In practice, these gates are built from combinations of simpler logic gates.

The US circuit symbol for an XOR gate is: XOR symbol and the IEC symbol is: XOR symbol