We all know, at least intellectually, that our computers are all built with lots of tiny transistors. But beyond that it’s a little hard to describe. They’re printed on a silicon wafer somehow, and ...

Before the era of large-scale integration (LSI) semiconductor circuits, discrete logic circuits using the common diode-transistor logic (DTL) were still necessary and available in a format that was ...

These days, a lot of digital design work involves little more than patching together a few highly integrated blocks. It seems as if everything is VLSI (and CPLD/FPGA). A lot is, but not everything.

The previous article examined the concept of logic gates. They can be made from discrete and active electronic components, although today logic gates are available within integrated circuits. In this ...