A "logic family" may also refer to a set of techniques used to implement logic within large scale integrated circuits such as a central processor, memory, or other complex function. Some such logic families, such as Complementary Pass-transistor Logic, use static techniques. Other such logic families, such as domino logic, use clocked dynamic techniques to minimize size, power consumption, and delay.
Before the widespread use of integrated circuits, various solid-state and vacuum-tube logic systems were used but these were never as standardized and interoperable as the integrated circuit devices.
The families (DL, RTL, DTL, and ECL) were derived from the logic circuits used in early computers, originally implemented using discrete components. One example is the Philips NORbits family of logic building blocks.
The PMOS and I2L logic families were used for relatively short periods, mostly in special purpose custom LSI (Large Scale Integrated Circuits) devices and are generally considered obsolete. For example, early digital clocks or electronic calculators may have used one or more PMOS devices to provide most of the logic for the finished product. The F14 CADC, Intel 4004, Intel 4040, and Intel 8008 microprocessors and their support chips were PMOS.
Of these families, only five (ECL, TTL, CMOS, NMOS, and BiCMOS) are currently still in widespread use. ECL is used for very high speed applications because of its price and power demands, while NMOS logic is mainly used in VLSI (Very Large Scale Integrated Circuits) applications such as CPUs and memory chips which fall outside of the scope of this article. Present-day "building block" logic gate ICs are based on the ECL, TTL, CMOS, and BiCMOS families.
Texas Instruments soon introduced its own family of RTL.
A variant with integrated capacitors, RCTL, had increased speed, but lower immunity to noise than RTL. This was made by Texas Instruments as their "51XX" series.
A family of diode logic and diode-transistor logic integrated circuits was developed by Texas Instruments for the D-37C Minuteman II Guidance Computer in 1962, but these devices were not available to the public.
Transistor-Transistor Logic uses bipolar transistors to form its integrated circuits. TTL has changed significantly over the years, with newer versions replacing the older types.
The German physicist Walter H. Schottky formulated a theory predicting the Schottky effect, which led to the Schottky diode and later Schottky transistors. Schottky transistors have a much higher switching speed than conventional transistors because the Schottky junction does not promote charge storage, leading to faster switching gates. Gates built with Schottky transistors use more power than normal TTL and switch faster. With low power Schottky circuits, internal resistance values were increased to reduce power consumption and increase switching speed over the original version. The introduction of Advanced Low Power(ALS) further increased speed and reduced power consumption. A faster logic family called 'Fast TTL' (F) was also introduced that was faster than normal Schottky TTL.
In contrast to TTL logic, CMOS uses almost no power in the static state (i.e. when inputs are not changing). A CMOS gate draws no current other than leakage when in a steady 1 or 0 state. When the gate switches states, current is drawn from the power supply to charge the stray capacitance at the output of the gate. This means that current draw of CMOS devices increases with clock speed.
The first CMOS logic family of integrated circuits was introduced by RCA as CD4000 COS/MOS, the 4000 series, in 1968. Initially CMOS logic was slower than LS-TTL; however, because the logic thresholds of CMOS were proportional to the power supply voltage, CMOS devices were well-adapted to battery-operated systems with simple power supplies. CMOS gates can also tolerate much wider voltage ranges than TTL gates because the logic thresholds are (approximately) proportional to power supply voltage, and not the fixed levels required by bipolar circuits.
With this technology the required silicon area for implementing such digital CMOS functions has rapidly shrunk. Nowadays, the modern VLSI technology, allowing for incorporating many millions of basic logic operations onto one single silicon chip, almost exclusively exploits this CMOS technology. The extremely small capacitance of the on chip wiring, as well as its length compared to a PCB, combined with the absence of the delay created by the required I/O-cells of all separate gate chips, caused an increase in performance by several orders of magnitude. On chip clock rates as high as 4 GHz have become common, approximately 1000 times faster than the technology by 1970.
Interconnecting any two logic families often required special techniques such as additional pull-up resistors, or purpose-built interface circuits, since the logic families may use different voltage levels to represent 1 and 0 states, and may have other interface requirements only met within the logic family.
TTL logic levels are different from those of CMOS – generally a TTL output does not rise high enough to be reliably recognized as a logic 1 by a CMOS input. This problem was solved by the invention of the 74HCT family of devices that uses CMOS technology but TTL input logic levels. These devices only work with a 5V power supply. They form a replacement for TTL logic, although HCT is slower than original TTL (HC logic has about the same speed as original TTL).
These are generally used "on-chip" and are not delivered as building-block medium-scale or small-scale integrated circuits.
The following logic families would either have been used to build up systems from functional blocks such as flip-flops, counters, and gates, or else would be used as "glue" logic to interconnect very-large scale integration devices such as memory and processors. Not shown are some early obscure logic families from the early 1960's such as direct-coupled transistor logic, which did not become widely available.
"Propagation delay" is the time taken for a two-input NAND gate to produce a result after a change of state at its inputs. "Toggle speed" represents the fastest speed at which a J-K flip flop could operate. "Power per gate" is for an individual 2-input NAND gate; usually there would be more than one gate per IC package. Values are very typical and would vary slightly depending on application conditions, manufacturer, temperature, and particular type of logic circuit. "Introduction year" is when at least some of the devices of the family were available in volume for civilian uses. Some military applications pre-dated civilian use.
|Family||Description||Propagation delay (ns)||Toggle speed (MHz)||Power per gate @1 MHz (mW)||Typical supply voltage V (range)||Introduction year||Remarks|
|RTL||Resistor-transistor logic||__||4||10||3.3||1963||the first CPU built from integrated circuits (the AGC) used RTL.|
|DTL||Diode-transistor logic||__||__||10||5||1962||Introduced by Signetics, Fairchild 930 line became industry standard in 1964|
|CMOS||AC/ACT||3||125||0.5||3.3 or 5 (2-6 or 4.5 to 5.5)||1985||ACT has TTL Compatible levels|
|CMOS||HC/HCT||9||30||0.5||5 (2-6)||1982||HCT has TTL compatible levels|
|CMOS||4000B/74C||30||5||1.2||10V (3-18)||1970||Approximately half speed and power at 5 volts|
|TTL||Original series||10||25||10||5 (4.75-5.25)||1964||Several manufacturers|
|TTL||L||33||3||1||5 (4.75-5.25)||1964||Low power|
|TTL||H||6||43||22||5 (4.75-5.25)||1964||High speed|
|TTL||S||3||110||19||5 (4.75-5.25)||1969||Schottky high speed|
|TTL||LS||10||33||2||5 (4.75-5.25)||1976||Low power Schotky high speed|
|TTL||ALS||4||34||1.3||5 (4.5-5.5)||1976||Advanced Low power Schottky|
|TTL||AS||2||105||8||5 (4.5-5.5)||1980||Advanced Schottky|
|TTL||AS||2||105||8||5 (4.5-5.5)||1980||Advanced Schottky|
|TTL||G||1.5||1125 (1.125 GHz)||1.65 - 3.6||2004||First GHz 7400 series logic|
|ECL||ECL III||1||500||60||-5.2(-5.19 - -5.21)||1968||Improved ECL|
|ECL||MECL I||8||31||-5.2||1962||first integrated logic circuit commercially produced|
|ECL||ECL 10K||2||125||25||-5.2(-5.19 - -5.21)||1971||Motorola|
|ECL||ECL 100K||.75||350||40||-4.5(-4.2 - -5.2)||1981|
|ECL||ECL 100KH||1||250||25||-5.2(-4.9 - -5.5)||1981|
|ECL||ECL 100K||.75||350||40||-4.5(-4.2 - -5.2)||1981|| |