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The most versatile logic gate?

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Zero999:
My vote would go for the NOT gate because it can be made into a NAND, AND, NOR, OR gate, Schmitt trigger by just by adding resistors and it makes a nice oscillator by adding a capacitor.

Attached are some examples. I've deliberately omitted the really obvious ones such as the astable, monostable, bistable and Schmitt trigger (see the (N)AND/(N)OR gate for that) and decided to give some circuits, I've not seen very often.

DJPhil:
Good call, I'd have to agree.

Before I looked at the picture I was thinking, "Have I seen a NOT gate package? I don't remember that one!"
Then I realized that everything I'd been reading was referring to them as inverters. Duh!  :-X

EEVblog:
If you have to add external passives then it's not really the most versatile gate IMO.
The NAND is widely regarded as the most versatile gate.
Remember, the NAND is a NOT gate too, just tie one input high (or together). But you only get 4 NAND's per package compared to 6 inverters.

Dave.

Zad:
NAND. Always has been, always will be. Sure you can get 6 inverters in a 14 pin package, but if you want it to do anything else you have to use 2 gates and additional passives.

Simon:
I seem to remember from what little they did bother to teach us in school that you can use nands as your "universal" and on large circuits you can then simplify it, for example if you made two gates from nands and then joined them together you will often find that you have the output nand of one gate is setup as a not and the input nand of another gate is setup as a not. and because the negative of a negative is the original positive you can remove both, so really unless your using one gate only it can pay to work with nand equivalents as you may well still end up using just a few gates more

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