What is digital hardware?
Devices compute logical functions of their inputs
- Primitives: AND, OR, BUFFER, NAND, NOR, NOT, XOR, XNOR
- Learn now: Logic gates, truth tables, Boolean descriptions
- Learn later: Waveforms, logic blocks, behavioral descriptions, state descriptions
- Also memories, latches, flip-flops, registers, etc.
Uses binary number representations
- Physical quantities that can be interpreted as a logical "0" or "1"
- Example: Voltage V’ where V’< 0.8V is a "0" and V’> 2.0V is a "1”
Uses logic restoration at every gate
- Trade device gain for symbol integrity
- Replace real numbers with binary numbers? noise margin