Implementation of A Full Subtractor Using Two Half Subtractors
Implementation of A Full Subtractor Using Two Half Subtractors
Subtractors
A subtractor is a combinational logic circuit that can perform the subtraction of two numbers (or binary
numbers) and produce the difference between them. It is a combinational logic circuit. Therefore, the
output of the subtractor depends only on its present inputs.
Half Subtractor
Full Subtractor
Read this tutorial to find out how you can realize a full subtractor using half subtractors. For the
implementation of a full subtractor, we require two half subtractors. Let's start with a brief overview of
half and full subtractors.
The block diagram and logic circuit diagram of the half subtractor are shown in Figure-1.
From the logic diagram of the half subtractor, it can be seen that a half subtractor can be realized using
an XOR gate together with a NOT gate and an AND gate.
The difference bit (d) of the half subtractor is given by XORing the two inputs A and B. Therefore,
Dif f erence, d = A ⊕ B = A′ B +
AB′
The borrow (b) of the half subtractor is the AND of A' (compliment of A) and B. Therefore,
Borrow, b = A′ B
From the logic diagram of the full subtractor, we can see that the implementation of a fullsubtractor
requires two XOR gates, two NOT gates, two AND gates, and one OR gate.
Now, let us discuss the realization of full subtractor using two half subtractors.
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The second half subtractor performs the XOR operation on the output of first XOR gate and the input
borrow bit (bin), and the AND gate of the second half circuit gives an output equal to (A'B + AB')'.bin.
The output of the second XOR gate is the output different bit (d), and the output borrow bit (b) is
obtained by ORing the outputs of two AND gates.
In this way, we can realize a full subtractor by cascading two half subtractors, as shown in the above
figure