TERM OF THE DAY - Half Adder

What does it mean?
An adder is a digital circuit that performs addition of numbers. In many computers and other kinds of processors adders are used in the arithmetic logic units or ALU. They are also utilized in other parts of the processor, where they are used to calculate addresses, table indices, increment and decrement operators, and similar operations.

A half adder is a type of adder, an electronic circuit that performs the addition of numbers. The half adder is able to add two single binary digits and provide the output plus a carry value. It has two inputs, called A and B, and two outputs S (sum) and C (carry). The common representation uses a XOR logic gate and an AND logic gate.

The half adder adds two single binary digits A and B. It has two outputs, sum (S) and carry (C). The carry signal represents an overflow into the next digit of a multi-digit addition. The value of the sum in decimal system is 2C + S. The simplest half-adder design, pictured on the right, incorporates an XOR gate for S and an AND gate for C. The Boolean logic for the sum (in this case S) will be A'B+AB' whereas for carry (C) will be AB. With the addition of an OR gate to combine their carry outputs, two half adders can be combined to make a full adder.[1] The half adder adds two input bits and generates a carry and sum, which are the two outputs of a half adder. The input variables of a half adder are called the augend and addend bits. The output variables are the sum and carry.