Digital Logic Foundations

Gates, Boolean algebra and sequential logic. The digital building blocks every VLSI engineer must master: logic gates, Boolean algebra and minimisation, combinational circuits, flip-flops and latches, counters and registers.

• Logic Gates — Logic gates are the atoms of digital electronics. Learn binary signals and logic levels, the basic gates (NOT, AND, OR, NAND, NOR, XOR, XNOR) with truth tables and symbols, universal gates, CMOS implementation, noise margins, fan-out, propagation delay and dynamic power.
• Boolean Algebra & K-Maps — Boolean algebra lets you simplify logic before building it. Learn the laws (identity, complement, distributive, absorption), De Morgan's theorems, SOP and POS forms, minterms and maxterms, Karnaugh maps with don't-cares, and how simplification saves gates, power and delay.
• Combinational Circuits — Combinational circuits produce outputs that depend only on current inputs. Learn the design procedure, half and full adders, ripple-carry and carry-lookahead adders, subtractors with two's complement, magnitude comparators, parity generators, and timing (critical path, glitches).
• Latches & Flip-Flops — Sequential circuits remember. Learn the SR latch, gated D latch, edge-triggered D, JK and T flip-flops, characteristic tables and equations, setup, hold and clock-to-Q times, maximum clock frequency, metastability and synchronisers.
• Counters & Registers — Counters and registers are built from flip-flops. Learn asynchronous (ripple) and synchronous counters, up/down and modulo-N counters, frequency division, shift registers (SISO, SIPO, PISO, PIPO), ring and Johnson counters, LFSRs, and finite state machines.