Logic Families
Basic Characteristics of Logic Families
• The main characteristics of Logic families
include:
– Speed
– Fan-in
– Fan-out
– Noise Immunity
– Power Dissipation
Contt..
• Speed: Speed of a logic circuit is determined by
the time between the application of input and
change in the output of the circuit.
• Fan-in: It determines the number of inputs the
logic gate can handle.
• Fan-out: Determines the number of circuits that a
gate can drive.
• Noise Immunity: Maximum noise that a circuit can
withstand without affecting the output.
• Power: When a circuit switches from one state to
the other, power dissipates.
Types
• TTL – transistor-transistor logic based on
bipolar transistors.
• CMOS – complementary metal-oxide
semiconductor logic based on metal-oxide-
semiconductor field effect transistors
(MOSFETs).
• ECL – emitter coupled logic based on bipolar
transistors.
General Characteristics of Basic Logic
Families
• CMOS consumes very little power, has
excellent noise immunity, and is used with a
wide range of voltages.
• TTL can drive more current and uses more
power than CMOS.
• ECL is fast, with poor noise immunity and high
power consumption.
Complementary metal oxide
semiconductor (CMOS)
– most widely used family for large-scale devices
– combines high speed with low power consumption
– usually operates from a single supply of 5 – 15 V
– excellent noise immunity of about 30% of supply
voltage
– can be connected to a large number of gates (about
50)
– many forms – some with tPD down to 1 ns
– power consumption depends on speed (perhaps 1
mW
Transistor-transistor logic (TTL)
– based on bipolar transistors
– one of the most widely used families for small-
and medium-scale devices – rarely used for VLSI
– typically operated from 5V supply
– typical noise immunity about 1 – 1.6 V
– many forms, some optimised for speed, power,
etc.
– high speed versions comparable to CMOS (~ 1.5
ns)
– low-power versions down to about 1 mW/gate
Emitter-coupled logic (ECL)
– based on bipolar transistors, but removes
problems of storage time by preventing the
transistors from saturating
– very fast operation - propagation delays of 1ns or
less
– high power consumption, perhaps 60 mW/gate
– low noise immunity of about 0.2-0.25 V
– used in some high speed specialist applications,
but now largely replaced by high speed CMOS
A Comparison of Logic Families
A CMOS inverter
CMOS gates
Discrete TTL inverter and NAND gate
circuits
Noise immunity
– noise is present in all real systems
– this adds random fluctuations to voltages
representing logic levels
– to cope with noise, the voltage ranges defining the
logic levels are more tightly constrained at the
output of a gate than at the input
– thus small amounts of noise will not affect the
circuit
– the maximum noise voltage that can be tolerated
by a circuit is termed its noise immunity, VNI
Key Points
• Physical gates are not ideal components
• Logic gates are manufactured in a range of logic families
• The ability of a gate to ignore noise is its ‘noise
immunity’
• Both MOSFETs and bipolar transistors are used in gates
• All logic gates exhibit a propagation delay when
responding to changes in their inputs
• The most widely used logic families are CMOS and TTL
• CMOS is available in a range of forms offering high
speed or very low power consumption
• TTL logic is also produced in many versions, each
optimized for a particular characteristic
