The OR gate

The OR gate

The OR gate is the simplest of the logic gates in wires. The picture below shows an OR gate fed by two signals. The gate consists of five copper cells in a ‘plus’ shape. The signals shown are arranged so that all four possible input combinations to the gate occur in sequence. The combination ‘00’ arrives at the gate’s inputs at generation 0, ‘01’ at generation 6, ‘10’ at generation 12, and ‘11’ at generation 18.

OR gate

It should be clear from the picture how the gate works: essentially, the two input wires are just joined together. However, there is one subtlety: there is what might seem to be an unnecessary extra copper cell making up the left-hand arm of the plus. Consider what happens when an electron arrives at one input but not at the other. Without the extra cell, the signal would propagate through the gate and back up the other input wire. It would then annihilate the next electron it met coming the other way, which is obviously not desirable. With the extra cell, a row of three electron heads appears in the middle of the gate, and so the signal does not propagate.

Next we shall look at an exclusive-OR gate.

<Previous page  Wireworld index  Next page>


This page most recently updated Fri 5 Jan 10:25:32 GMT 2024
Word Matcher

Options...
Type a pattern, e.g.
h???o
into the box and click ‘Go!’ to see a list of matching words. More...


Qxw screen
Qxw is a free (GPL) crossword construction program. New! Release 20200708 for both Linux and Windows. Non-Roman alphabets, batch mode, multiplex lights, answer treatments, circular and hex grids, jumbled entries, lots more besides. More...

You can order my book, ‘Practical Signal Processing’, directly from CUP or via Hive, Amazon UK or Amazon US.
Practical Signal Processing front cover
“Probably the best book on signal processing ever written” — review at Goodreads.
Wydanie polskie.

If you find this site useful or diverting, please consider a donation to NASS (a UK registered charity), to KickAS (in the US), or to a similar body in your own country.

Copyright ©2004–2024.
All trademarks used are hereby acknowledged.