The Essentials of Computer Organization and Architecture, 6th Edition

3.5 DIGITAL COMPONENTS

Upon opening a computer and looking inside, one would realize that there is a lot to know about all of the digital components that make up the system. Every computer is built using collections of gates that are all connected by way of wires acting as signal pathways. These collections of gates are often quite standard, resulting in a set of building blocks that can be used to build the entire computer system. Surprisingly, these building blocks are all constructed using the basic AND, OR, and NOT operations. In the next few sections, we discuss digital circuits, their relationship to Boolean algebra, the standard building blocks, and examples of the two different categories—combinational logic and sequential logic—into ...