Chapter 2
Getting Logical
In This Chapter
Discovering Boolean logic
Examining the different types of logic gates
Building logic circuits with only NAND or NOR gates
Stimulating logic gates with software
Mr Spock doesn’t just stand out in Star Trek because of his pointy ears. His uniqueness is also due to what’s between them: his brain. His part Vulcan ancestry makes him colder and less emotional than the rest of the Starship Enterprise crew. Spock thinks like a computer, because they both employ a lot of logic.
In this chapter, we look at the basic principles of logic, which are the underpinnings of digital electronics. In particular, we explore logic gates, which (rather than being Bill’s daughter!) are handy devices that perform a logical operation on one or more binary inputs and produce a single binary output result (we describe binary in this minibook’s Chapter 1).
The overwhelming complexity of modern computer systems is built on the simple concept of logic gates. A modern computer processor consists of millions of individual logic gates connected in a way that enables the ...
