{"id":7038,"date":"2015-06-01T09:15:35","date_gmt":"2015-06-01T16:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.digilentinc.com\/?p=7038"},"modified":"2025-06-03T06:47:58","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T13:47:58","slug":"logic-gates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/logic-gates\/","title":{"rendered":"What Are Logic Gates? Basics and Functions"},"content":{"rendered":"

The very basis of computers is binary.\u00a0In electronics everything can be boiled down to 1s and 0s. Logic gates are digital circuits that take one or more binary inputs and produce a binary output. You can check out the basis of logic with Boolean Algebra<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There are seven\u00a0basic logic gates that we are going to go over today.<\/p>\n

\"symbols<\/a>
Image from\u00a0Wikipedia<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For this blog post, you can see that most of the gates take two\u00a0inputs (X and Y). NOT is the only exception, taking 1 input. Each of these gates has a related truth table<\/a> and logic symbol<\/a> (we will learn these later).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"and2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

AND<\/strong> is a pretty simple.\u00a0Unless X and Y are 1, 0 will be outputted.<\/p>\n

\"nandfix\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

NAND<\/strong> is the negation of AND.<\/strong>\u00a0The output will always be 1 unless<\/em> X and Y are 1, when the output will be 0.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"or\"<\/a><\/p>\n

OR<\/strong> is the inclusion of one or more inputs will create an output of 1. With OR<\/strong>, X and Y can be 1, and the output will be 1.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"norfix\"<\/a><\/p>\n

NOR<\/strong> is the negation of OR.<\/strong>\u00a0If X or Y are 1, or X and Y are 1, then the output will be 0.\u00a0In NOR<\/strong>, the only inputs to output 1 are when X and Y equal 0.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"xor\"<\/a>
\nXOR<\/strong> is what some people assumed OR<\/strong> would, an exclusive OR<\/strong>. XOR<\/strong> will only produce the output 1 if there is only 1 between X and Y.\u00a0Two 0s or two 1s will output 0.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"xnorfix\"<\/a>
\n<\/a>
\nXNOR<\/strong> is the inverse of XOR<\/strong>, meaning that only two 0s and two 1s will produce an output of 1. XNOR<\/strong> seems a lot closer to AND<\/strong>, but it is important to remember that it is the inverse of XOR<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"notdiff\"<\/a><\/p>\n

NOT<\/strong> is the simplest logic gate.\u00a0If a 1 is passed in, it becomes a 0.\u00a0If 0 is passed in, it becomes 1.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

These seven\u00a0logic gates are pretty simple, but when used in conjunction with each other, they can be used to build integrated circuits!<\/p>\n

0<\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div>
<\/div><\/div>
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The very basis of computers is binary. In electronics everything can be boiled down to 1s and 0s. Logic gates are digital circuits that take one or more binary inputs and produce a binary output. You can check out the basis of logic with Boolean Algebra.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":7205,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,1563],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[4478],"class_list":["post-7038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fpga","category-guide"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/xnor.png","authors":[{"term_id":4478,"user_id":29,"is_guest":0,"slug":"josh-woldstad","display_name":"Josh","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/166ab2302d3f5f5f33ecab52f79a1ab44277f4ef8f5073fe66cf54070f6cd419?s=96&d=mm&r=g","1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":"","9":"","10":""}],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7038"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31637,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7038\/revisions\/31637"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7038"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=7038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}