摘要 |
A carry look ahead circuit is implemented such that only one gate delay is incurred in calculating the carry output after the carry input becomes valid. The carry input and the carry output have opposite logical polarities. "Odd" carry look ahead stages are defined to have a positive logic carry input and a negative logic carry output, while "even" stages are defined to have a negative logic carry input and a positive logic carry output. Using "alternating polarity" in this manner simplifies the logic design of both odd and even stages. In a first embodiment, the generate and propagate computations are performed by a separate logic block. As the level of look ahead increases, the complexity of the generate and propagate block increases, but the remainder of the circuitry is unaffected. In a second embodiment, the generate and propagate signal computations are integrated into a complex gate which produces the carry output of each stage. In this manner, a reduction in the number of transistors used and circuit complexity is achieved over the first embodiment. Using more stages with less latency per stage reduces the total hardware required to accomplish a fixed latency. The minimum achievable propagation delay is reduced because the delay from carry input to carry output in each alternating polarity carry look ahead stage is less.
|