Lab 4: Rudimentary Adder

Circuits
Rebecca Sontheimer
ECEN 248-511
TA: Mehnaz Rahman
Date: October 8, 2014

Objective
The purpose of this lab is to understand the different types of adder circuits. I
learned how to design a half adder, a full adder, and a 2-bit Ripple Carry adder. Each of
these builds on top of the previous ones and I will be able to create a full adder from the
concept of two half adders and the Ripple carry adder from the concept of two full
adders. In this lab, we had to design and test our adder circuits based on a set of rules,
which gave me good practice in designing my own simple circuit.

Design
Half Adder
Truth Table:
X Y C0 S
0 0 0 0
0 1 0 1
1 0 0 1
1 1 1 0
Karnaugh Maps:

Sum Y

C0 Y

Logic Expressions with XOR:

S = XY
C = X*Y
Logic Expressions without XOR:
S = X*Y+X*Y
C = X*Y
Schematic:
Full Adder
Truth Table:
C X Y C0 S
0

0
0
0

1
0
1

Karnaugh Maps:
C0 XY

XY

00

01 11 10

00

01 11 10

Logic with XOR:

S = XYC
C0 = (XY)*C + (X*Y)
Logic without XOR:
S = (X*Y*C)+(X*Y*C)+(X*Y*C)+(X*Y*C)
C0 = X*Y + X*C + Y*C
Schematic:

Two Bit Ripple Carry Adder

When Cin=0

When Cin=1

A0 B0 A1 B1 S0 S1 Cout S0 S1 Cout
0

Schematic:

Results
This lab focused more on our ability to read schematics and build circuits rather
than collecting any data. We had to test the circuit to make sure that it gave the correct
output, which involved a lot of trouble-shooting and making sure my wiring was not
messy or confusing. I found that once I had figured out the truth tables and schematics,
that the circuits were actually very simple. However, each circuit brought its own
challenges. This lab taught me that color-coding wires is very useful because after a
while all of them start looking alike, especially when many wires are coming from the
same pin and the pins around them. The wires are long and get to be very confusing if
you dont keep track of what wire is where on the schematic and what has already been
placed and what has been forgotten. For example, while implementing the two-bit ripple
carry adder, I had accidently not wired the Vcc of one of the ICs to the power supply.
This caused me to check the circuit many times and I became frustrated because
everything seemed right, when in reality I had just made a simple mistake. Below are
pictures of the finished products.
Half Adder

Full Adder

Two Bit Ripple Carry Adder

Conclusion
In conclusion, this was simple and straightforward. No actual data had to be
taken, but rather the lab was a test of skills. I also became more comfortable with

designing an efficient circuit. I feel as though this lab was a major learning experience
after all of the issues and simple mistakes I ran into.

Questions
1. All of the design items can be found in the design section of this lab.
2. Worst case propagation delay for a full adder design. Each of the colored paths
denoted below show the maximum delay path because each gate is a delay unit of
1 and each of the paths go through the maximum of three gates.

3. This diagram shows a ripple carry adder diagram using the concept of 4 half
adders to create the same circuit that is shown above in the design section.

Feedback

1. I like making my own designs and circuits because it helps me to truly understand
the lab. This lab would have been easier if we had shorter wires or wire clippers.
2. Nothing about the lab manual was unclear.
3. I really think having wire clippers or shorter wires in the lab would make it much
easier to learn because then we could see our circuits more clearly and actually
see the paths that the wires are taking.