What is digital hardware?

• Physical quantities (voltages) represent logical values

  • If (0V < voltage < 0.8V), then symbol is a “0”
  • If (2.0V < voltage < 5V), then symbol is a “1”

• Physical devices compute logical functions of their inputs

  • AND, OR, NOT
  • Set of n wires allow binary integers of size 2n

• Conceptually, how do we compute using hardware?

  • What is the underlying basis for digital computation?

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