Combinational Circuit

Combinational (combinatorial) circuits realize Boolean functions and deal with digitized signals, usually
denoted by 0s and 1s. The behavior of a combinational circuit is memory less; that is, given a stimulus to
the input of a combinational circuit, a response appears at the output after some propagation delay, but the
response is not stored or fed back. Simply put, the output depends solely on its most recent input and is
independent of the circuits past history.
Design of a combinational circuit begins with a behavioral specification and selection of the
implementation technique. These are then followed by simplification, hardware synthesis, and
verification. Combinational circuits can be specified via Boolean logic expressions, structural
descriptions, or truth tables. Various implementation techniques, using fixed and programmable
components, are outlined in the rest of this article. Combinational circuits implemented with fixed logic
tend to be more expensive in terms of design effort and hardware cost, but they are often both faster and
denser and consume less power. They are thus suitable for high-speed circuits and/or high volume
production. Implementations that use memory devices or programmable logic circuits, on the other hand,
are quite economical for low-volume production and rapid prototyping, but may not yield the best
performance, density, or power consumption.
In digital circuit theory, combinational logic (sometimes also referred to as time-independent logic[1] ) is
a type of digital logic which is implemented by Boolean circuits, where the output is a pure function of
the present input only. This is in contrast to sequential logic, in which the output depends not only on the
present input but also on the history of the input. In other words, sequential logic has memory while
combinational logic does not.
Combinational circuit is used in computer circuits to perform Boolean algebra on input signals and on
stored data. Practical computer circuits normally contain a mixture of combinational and sequential logic.
For example, the part of an arithmetic logic unit, or ALU, that does mathematical calculations is
constructed using combinational logic. Other circuits used in computers, such as half adders, full adders,
half subtractors, full subtractors, multiplexers, demultiplexers, encoders and decoders are also made by
using combinational circuit.
Combinational logic is used to build circuits that produce specified outputs from certain inputs. The
construction of combinational logic is generally done using one of two methods: a sum of products, or a
product of sums.

A sum of products can be visualized in a truth table, as in this example:

Result

Logical equivalent