Practical approach for design of flip-flops and transparent latches

Abstract

In the discipline of digital circuits of the Engineering and Computer courses, the two memory elements are flip-flops (FFs) and transparent latches. Usually, they are simply presented and explained without describing their synthesis. When the synthesis is presented it needs a high number of class hours to teach it. In this article we propose a practical method to teach students the synthesis of different FFs and transparent latches. It starts with a symbolic state transition graph that is aimed to describe FFs and transparent latches. Our method contains very simple steps where the learning process requires a low number of class hours.