What if all a computer could do was add?

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Is there even a way to envision this? Now is the time for some bright minds to enter this discussion of how computers work. We’ve got quantum computers about to emerge with real world tasks this year. It’s high time we at least knew how the current computer works.

Don’t be shy. Articles and other discourses are welcome, so long as they are not spam.

For openers, somebody please explain NAND gates. Either a logic or a circuit explanation would be appropriate.

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*bump :grin: *

I think this is definitely a topic worth trying to wrap our minds around!

Here’s a simple (just somewhat lengthy) article introducing logic gates:

Okaaay but for anyone who’s TL;DR… here’s my best summary about NAND and logic gates…

  • NAND is a shortened way of saying the term “not/negated AND” where AND is one of the (debatably) three basic logic gates—the other being OR and NOT.
  • Logic gates are basically computer operations that return boolean values! Except instead of true and false, the results typically return 0 or 1, where the former can be called false and the latter can be called true.
  • We can combine NOT with AND or OR to make more gates! Ie. NAND and NOR. (Referring to a point I made earlier, these gates can also be considered basic…)
  • Logic gates will always start with two inputs (namely some combination of 0 and/or 1), and end with one output.
  • As per the article,

The NOR gate (negated OR) gives an output of 1 if both inputs are 0, it gives 0 otherwise.

  • Well alrighty, that’s all! Continuing the discussion though… I mean, are there really only 7 logic gates? What are the possibilities?? If you’re really intrigued now, here’s to some more reading!
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