In: Computer Science
Describe the types of logic gates which might be more efficient in defining carry lookahead logic?
Motivation behind Carry Look-Ahead Adder
:
In ripple carry adders, for each adder block, the two bits that are
to be added are available instantly. However, each adder block
waits for the carry to arrive from its previous block. So, it is
not possible to generate the sum and carry of any block until the
input carry is known. The block waits for the block to produce its carry. So
there will be a considerable time delay which is carry propagation
delay.
Consider the above 4-bit ripple carry adder. The sum is produced by the corresponding full adder as soon as the input signals are applied to it. But the carry input is not available on its final steady state value until carry is available at its steady state value. Similarly depends on and on . Therefore, though the carry must propagate to all the stages in order that output and carry settle their final steady-state value.
The propagation time is equal to the propagation delay of each adder block, multiplied by the number of adder blocks in the circuit. For example, if each full adder stage has a propagation delay of 20 nanoseconds, then will reach its final correct value after 60 (20 × 3) nanoseconds. The situation gets worse, if we extend the number of stages for adding more number of bits.
Carry Look-ahead Adder :
A carry look-ahead adder reduces the propagation delay by
introducing more complex hardware. In this design, the ripple carry
design is suitably transformed such that the carry logic over fixed
groups of bits of the adder is reduced to two-level logic. Let us
discuss the design in detail.
Consider the full adder circuit shown above with corresponding
truth table. We define two variables as ‘carry
generate’ and ‘carry
propagate’ then,
The sum output and carry output can be expressed in terms of carry generate and carry propagate as
where produces the carry when both
, are 1 regardless of the input
carry. is associated with the
propagation of carry from to .
The carry output Boolean function of each stage in a 4 stage carry look-ahead adder can be expressed as
From the above Boolean equations we can observe that does not have to wait for and to propagate but actually is propagated at the same time as and . Since the Boolean expression for each carry output is the sum of products so these can be implemented with one level of AND gates followed by an OR gate.