Chapter 4

Gates and Circuits

 Integrated Circuits aka CHIPS

• What’s in this thing????

4–2
 Chapter Goals

• How to make a gate from transistors

• How to make integrated circuits using
gates
• The basic gates and their behavior
• How gates are combined into (useful)
circuits

4–3
 Chapter Goals

• Describe gates and circuits using:

– Boolean expressions
– Truth Tables
– Logic Diagrams

• Understand half adders, full adders, and

binary addition circuits

4–4
 Computers and Electricity

• Transistor A device that can be used to

make gates
• Gate A device that performs a basic
operation on bit(s)
• Circuits Gates combined to perform more
complicated tasks

4–5
 Computers and Electricity

• 3 ways to describe the same thing

– Boolean expressions
– logic diagrams
– truth tables

4–6
 Computers and Electricity

• Boolean expressions A mathematical

notation for expressing TRUE/FALSE logic

• Example: F = AB + C

4–7
 Computers and Electricity

• Logic diagram A graphical

representation of a circuit
Each type of gate is represented by a specific
graphical symbol

• Truth table A table showing all possible

input value and the associated output
values

4–8
 Gates

• Let’s examine the processing of the following

six types of gates
– NOT
– AND
– OR
– XOR
– NAND
– NOR

4–9
 NOT Gate

• A NOT gate accepts one input value

and produces one output value
• Aka “an inverter”

Figure 4.1 Various representations of a NOT gate

4–10
 AND Gate

• An AND gate accepts two input signals

• If the two input values for an AND gate are
both 1, the output is 1; otherwise, the
output is 0

Figure 4.2 Various representations of an AND gate 4–11

 OR Gate

• If the two input values are both 0, the

output value is 0; otherwise, the output is 1

Figure 4.3 Various representations of a OR gate

4–12
 NAND and NOR Gates

• The NAND and NOR gates are essentially the

opposite of the AND and OR gates, respectively

Figure 4.5 Various representations

of a NAND gate

Figure 4.6 Various representations

of a NOR gate

4–15
 Constructing Gates

• Transistor A device that acts as a switch, either

open or closed (on or off)
– A transistor has no moving parts, yet acts like
a switch
– It is made of a semiconductor material, which is
neither a particularly good conductor of electricity,
such as copper, nor a particularly good insulator,
such as rubber

4–14
 Constructing Gates

• Transistor terminals
– Source
– Base
– Emitter

• If the electrical signal is

grounded, it is allowed to
flow through an alternative
route to the ground (literally)
where it can do no harm

Figure 4.8 The connections of a transistor

4–15
 Constructing Gates

• It turns out that, because the way a transistor

works, the easiest gates to create are the NOT,
NAND, and NOR gates

Figure 4.9 Constructing gates using transistors 4–16

 Combinational Circuits

• Consider the following Boolean expression A(B + C)

Page 100

Page 101

4–17
 Adders

• At the digital logic level, addition is

performed in binary
• Addition operations are carried out
by special circuits called, appropriately,
adders

4–18
 A Half Adder

• Recall that 1 PLUS 1 = 10 in base two

• In other words: 0 with a carry of 1

Inputs Outputs
A B Carry Sum
0 0 0 0
0 1 0 1
1 0 0 1
1 1 1 0

4–19
 Half Adder Circuit

• Two Boolean
expressions:

sum = A  B
carry = AB

Page 103

4–20
 A Full Adder

• A circuit called a full adder takes the

carry-in value into account
Inputs Outputs
Carry-
A B Carry In Out Sum
0 0 0 0 0
0 0 1 0 1
0 1 0 0 1
0 1 1 1 0
1 0 0 0 1
1 0 1 1 0
1 1 0 1 0
1 1 1 1 1
 Integrated Circuits

• We can combine 4 full adders to make a

Four-bit Adder Circuit (about 60
transistors)
 Integrated Circuits aka CHIPS

• What’s in this thing????

Chip Fabrication Technology

4–23
 Integrated Circuits

• Integrated circuit (also called a chip) A

piece of silicon on which many gates have
been embedded

4–24
 “Silicon Valley”

• Sand is mostly Silicon Dioxide

4–25
 “Silicon Valley”

• Silicon Dioxide ingots and wafers

4–26
 “Silicon Valley”

• Photolithography “Printed” with lots of

copies of some circuit

4–27
 Integrated Circuits aka CHIPS

• What’s in this thing????

Computer Architecture: Combining Abstractions into larger
Abstractions

4–28
Transistors and Gates

4–29
 Integrated Circuits

An simple chip containing 4 independent

NAND gates (about 8 transistors)

4–30
 Integrated Circuits

• A four-bit Full Adder Circuit

 Integrated Circuits

• An Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU) has

adders and other things in it
 Integrated Circuits

• A simple Central
Processing Unit, or
CPU has an ALU
and other things
• Take Engineering
303 Digital Logic
Design!!
 CPU Chips

• A recent CPU chip (Intel Nehelem) 731

Million transistors

4–34
 The Future of the IC

• Global Competition
• Further Integration (ARM)

4–35