12/15/23, 9:15 PM Building a Modern Computer from First Principles — Chap.

1 : Boolean Logic | by nathan brickett | Medium

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Building a Modern Computer from

First Principles — Chap. 1 : Boolean
Logic
nathan brickett · Follow
4 min read · Dec 21, 2020

Lately I’ve been reading the book Building a Modern Computer from First
Principles and I thought it would be good to reiterate some of the things I
have learned so far. If you are interested in a broad overview of how
computers work from the ground up, I highly recommend checking out this
resource.

In the preface of this book, they say that many computer science students
are missing the forest for the trees. What they mean is that the most
fundamental ideas and techniques in computer science are now hidden
under many layers of obscure interfaces and proprietary implementations.
And this is very true, most of us come into this field starting to learn
computer science using these high level languages and we begin to forget
that hardware and software are tightly interrelated through a hidden web of
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12/15/23, 9:15 PM Building a Modern Computer from First Principles — Chap. 1 : Boolean Logic | by nathan brickett | Medium

abstractions, interfaces, and contract-based implementations. To truly

understand how the software you are creating works, you need to
understand how the hardware itself is working as well. I come from a
biology background and the amount of similarities between computer
science and biology is astounding. I think most of us completely overlook
the intricacies of the modern computer and do not have any understanding
how it works. Talking to friends who have no computer science or
programming background will spout off ‘oh yeah, it’s like binary or
something, zeroes and ones’. And they aren’t wrong, but there is a lot more
to know, so let’s take a look!

Chapter 1 — Boolean Logic

Every single digital device that you or I use (computer, cellphone, router, tv,
etc., etc…. The list goes on and on) is based on a set of chips designed to
store and process information. Although these chips may come from from
different companies and they may come in different sizes or forms, they are
all made from the same fundamental building blocks: elementary logic gates
(Consider the comparison to biology; We can think of our DNA as being the
building blocks of humans, much like we can think of these logic gates as
being the building blocks of computers. DNA and logic gates are the
roadmap to the physical representation of what we actually see). These logic
gates can be physically implemented in many different materials and
fabrication technologies, but their logical behavior is consistent across all
computers.

We are going to look at a family of simple chips called Boolean gates.

Boolean gates are physical representations of Boolean functions. To
understand those we will look at some Boolean algebra first.

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12/15/23, 9:15 PM Building a Modern Computer from First Principles — Chap. 1 : Boolean Logic | by nathan brickett | Medium

Boolean algebra deals with Boolean values often referred to as (binary).

These values are typically labeled true/false, on/off, 1/0, etc. A Boolean
function operates on binary inputs and returns binary outputs. Since
computer hardware is based on the representation and manipulation of
binary values, Boolean functions play a central role in the specification,
construction, and optimization of hardware architectures. The basic Boolean
operators that are used are And, Or, and Not and every Boolean function, no
matter how complex, can be expressed using these three Boolean operators.
The Nand function (also Xor) has an interesting theoretical property, each of
the operations And, Or, and Not can be constructed from it. And since every
Boolean function can be constructed from And, Or, and Not operations, then
every Boolean function can be constructed from Nand operations alone. The
practical implications of this is that if we had at our disposal a physical
device that implemented the Nand function, we could make many copies of
this device and wire it in a certain way to implement in hardware any
Boolean function. The hard part is coming up with the right pattern of
connectivity to make this all happen.

The most simple gate logic is open/closed. It’s what we know as binary. A
gate is a physical device that implements
Open in appa Boolean function. Just like how

complex Boolean functions can be expressed in terms of simpler functions,

Search Write
complex gates are composed from more elementary gates. The most basic
gate is called a transistor and this is just a tiny switching device. Today most
gates are implemented as transistors etched in silicon, packaged as chips.
Since all logic gates have the same input and output semantics (0 and 1), they
can be chained together, creating composite gates of arbitrary complexity.
The construction of gate logic also called logic design is the art of
interconnecting gates in order to implement more complex functionality,
leading to composite gates.

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12/15/23, 9:15 PM Building a Modern Computer from First Principles — Chap. 1 : Boolean Logic | by nathan brickett | Medium

If we wanted we could theoretically purchase a soldering gun, a roll of

copper wire, and these elementary logic gates And, Or, and Not. We could
connect the chips with copper wire and solder the wire ends to the
respective input/output pins. If we followed the gate diagrams correctly we
should have a functioning Xor gate. If we repeated this process we could
have a bunch of Xor gates that could be used to construct a more
complicated chip in the future. Although it is easy to prove correctness in
simple cases like Xor, we cannot do so in many realistically complex chips.
Hardware designers specify the chip structure by writing an HDL (Hardware
Description Language) program, which is then subjected to rigorous testing.
These tests make sure the chip is giving the desired outputs based on the
inputs. In addition to the chips correctness they also design for speed of
computation, energy consumption, and the overall cost of the chip design,
When the simulated chip is complete this HDL program can become the
blueprint from which many copies of the physical chip can be stamped in
silicon. This was just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this topic, so I
suggest you look further if interested. Next time, chapter 2.

Computer Science Boolean Logic

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12/15/23, 9:15 PM Building a Modern Computer from First Principles — Chap. 1 : Boolean Logic | by nathan brickett | Medium

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