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HALF ADDER

HALF ADDER

Half adder is a combinational circuit, which performs the addition of two binary numbers A and B are of single bit. It produces two outputs sum, S & carry, C.

The Truth table of Half adder is shown below.

InputsOutputs
ABCS
0000
0101
1001
1110

When we do the addition of two bits, the resultant sum can have the values ranging from 0 to 2 in decimal. We can represent the decimal digits 0 and 1 with single bit in binary. But, we can’t represent decimal digit 2 with single bit in binary. So, we require two bits for representing it in binary.

Let, sum, S is the Least significant bit and carry, C is the Most significant bit of the resultant sum. For first three combinations of inputs, carry, C is zero and the value of S will be either zero or one based on the number of ones present at the inputs. But, for last combination of inputs, carry, C is one and sum, S is zero, since the resultant sum is two.

From Truth table, we can directly write the Boolean functions for each output as

 

S=AB

C=ABC=AB

We can implement the above functions with 2-input Ex-OR gate & 2-input AND gate. The circuit diagram of Half adder is shown in the following figure.

Half Adder

In the above circuit, a two input Ex-OR gate & two input AND gate produces sum, S & carry, C respectively. Therefore, Half-adder performs the addition of two bits.