Introduction to Flip Flop
The electronic flip-flops were first invented by the British physicists William Eccles and F. W. Jordan in 1918. They were called the Eccles–Jordan trigger circuits or multi-vibrators, made up of two vacuum tubes. After the inventions of integrated circuits flip-flops were manufactured from transistors. Flip-flops and latches are used as basic fundamental building blocks of digital electronics systems used in computers, communications, and many other types of digital and analog systems.
A flip-flop or latch is a circuit which has two stable states.. It is also used as the basic storage element in sequential logic. A flip-flop is a bistable multivibrator. A flip-flop changes its state when user applies input signals in particular sequence.
A flip-flop is used to store a single bit (binary digit) of data; one of its two states is represented by a "logic one" and the other is represented by a "logic zero". In a finite-state machine (FSM) the output and next state depend not only on its current input, but also on its current state. So design of FSM includes flip-flops along with some combinational circuits. Some other applications of flip-flop includes counters, registers, sequence detectors and sequence generators.
working of Flip flop
Application of Flip Flop
A) Registers:
A single flip-flop is used to store one bit information. If multiple flip-flops are connected in particular fashion then the resulting circuit is used to store multiple bits information. A register is a device, made up of a multiple of flip-flops to store multiple bits information. For example, storing N bit of information, N number of flip-flops (one flip of for each bit) are required.
The storage capacity of a register is a number of bits of digital data that it can retain. Writing a register means setting or resetting the individual flip flops. So inputting data into the register means changing their states correspond to the bits of data to be stored. Data can be written in serial or parallel mode. In serial mode, data is transferred into the register one bit at a time, whereas in parallel mode, the data is transferred into the register in parallel form. It means that all the flip flops are triggered into their new states simultaneously.
B) Counters:
When multiple flip flops interconnected such that their combined state at any time is the binary equivalent of the total number of pulses that are occurred up to that point. A counter is a logic device used to count the pulses. Digital counters are used for count the events. Electrical pulses corresponding to the event are produced using transducers & these pulses are counted by using a counter.
A counter can also be used as a frequency divider to obtain waveforms with different frequencies that are specific fractions of the input clock frequency. They are also used to generate specific time delays, to generate sequential/non-sequential binary counts and to generate pulse trains, etc.
C) Memory:
Flip-Flops also known as memory storage element. So it can be used for store any desired length and that storage data acquire any time.Information processing systems is part of Digital control system. So in information processing systems it is necessary to store digital data and retrieve the data from transmitter as well as receiver.
The data stored in memory in the form of RWMs (Read Write memories).This RWM constructed from semiconductor devices. Data will be lost if power is removed such memory is said to be volatile this type of feature is available in semiconductor devices. In Memory another type present that is called ROM.ROM is non-volatile.
Another type of memory is present that is called as Random access memory (RAM).RAM is used for access memory location by directly and immediately.