Concept
Combinational logic
Overview
In automata theory, combinational logic (also referred to as time-independent logic) is a type of digital logic that 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 logic 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 logic. An example of Combinational logic is a Combinational circuit whose output depends on the inputs.
Practical design of combinational logic systems may require consideration of the finite time required for practical logical elements to react to changes in their inputs. Where an output is the result of the combination of several different paths with differing numbers of switching elements, the output may momentarily change state before settling at the final state, as the changes propagate along different paths.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
So that an idea is _distinctly_ apprehended, according to them, when we can give a precise definition of it, in abstract terms. Here the professional logicians leave the subject; and I would not have troubled the reader with what they have to say, if it were not such a striking example of how they have been slumbering through ages of intellectual activity, listlessly disregarding the enginery of modern thought, and…
Charles S. Peirce, Chance, Love, and Logic
States what Combinational logic is.
This is nothing else than the necessity of abstract logic, which is the presupposition involved in the very fact of interrelated existence as disclosed in each immediate occasion of experience. The key to the pattern means this fact:—that from a select set of those general conditions, exemplified in any one and the same occasion, a pattern involving an infinite variety of other such conditions, also exemplified in…
Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the modern world
States what Combinational logic is.
It depends on the form of the objects of our investigation, which of the two methods, that are derivable from the notion of finite cognition, ought to be applied. In the first place, cognition is analytical. Analytical cognition deals with an object which is presented in detachment, and the aim of its action is to trace back to a universal the individual object before it. Thought in such circumstances means no more…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Logic of Hegel
States what Combinational logic is.
Related ideas
Place in the tradition
Part of Logic gate.