# Generalising Logic Gates

post by Jemist · 2021-07-17T17:25:08.428Z · LW · GW · 2 comments

## Contents

  Example 1
Example 2
Constructing Gates from Simpler Gates
None


Logic circuits traditionally consist of a directed, acyclic graph. Each node can take a value of 0 or 1. The nodes can have 0, 1, or 2 inputs. 0-input nodes are the "input" for the whole system. 1-input nodes are always NOT gates, they output 0 if they are input 1 and vice versa. 2-input nodes are either AND or OR gates, which work like you would expect. Some of the nodes are designated output nodes.

Let's generalise. We can define an  gate as a function . In this case a NOT gate is a  gate; both AND and OR gates are  gates. Consider all of the possible  gates: there are  possible inputs, and each one of them has one of  possible outputs. This means there are  possible  gates. Keeping track of the number of gates is important so we will thoroughly convince ourselves of this.

For  there are  possible gates. These correspond to gates with no inputs and one output, so the two gates are a node which always outputs 0 and a node which always outputs 1. If we allow  to vary, we have  possible  gates. This makes sense, as a  gate just consists of a node which always outputs the same string of  bits.  gates can then be considered as a lookup table with  locations, each containing  bits of information. In general there are  bits of information required to specify an  gate.

### Example 1

Now let's consider all possible  gates. There are  of them:

So what are the numbers above each gate?

Consider the input  as a set of numbers . We can define the input  uniquely using . In binary this is just the concatenation . This means there are  possible inputs. We will index these with .

We then take  as the th output when the input  is fed into the gate. We define  similarly to  above as . We then let  be the output number corresponding to the input .

Each  has  digits, so we can define . This is equivalent to concatenating  in binary, which also makes clear that  has  digits so the maximum value of  is .

Each  thus uniquely defines an  gate, therefore the three values  with  define a function . This is a slight generalisation of the notion of a boolean function, as boolean functions are generally defined as functions . We will call C the identifier of the gate.

Let's look at the above table more closely. We see some familiar gates: 1 is NOR, 6 is XOR, 7 is NAND, 8 is AND, 9 is XNOR, and 15 is OR. In fact for any gate , the gate  is the result of applying a NOT function to the output.

We also have some input-asymmetric gates. 2, 4, 11, and 13 are all of the form ( [GATE] NOT  where [GATE] is  an AND, OR, NAND or NOR gate.

The remaining gates are also of note. 1 and 15 are both constant. 3, 5, 10, and 12 all only depend on one of the inputs. These gates could be constructed from a circuit containing a single  or  gate. These illustrate a way in which gates can be trivial: they can be independent of one or more of the inputs.

There are other ways gates can be trivial: but these rely on having multiple output nodes. The first is duplicate output nodes, imagine the set of  gates for which  for all inputs. There are 16 of them, each corresponding to a  gate.

Another is separability. We will define an  gate as separable if we can split the  inputs into two or more subsets, each of which can only affect a subset of the  outputs. A  case of this would be the  gate where  = , and  = . Another example would be the  gate where  = NOT , and  = .

Gates can also be equivalent to each other with regards to permuting the inputs. We see this with the pairs 2 and 4; and 11 and 13 above.

### Example 2

A half-adder is a  gate. We can work through and find its identifier: First we need a table of inputs and outputs. We will take the carry term first and the sum second.

The binary representation of  can be easily read off as 10 01 01 00.  therefore the half-adder is identified as .

The binary number  is here read off as 11 10 10 01 10 01 01 00. . So the full adder can be expressed as  gets big fast as gates gain inputs.

### Constructing Gates from Simpler Gates

We might want to construct larger gates from simpler ones. This is how computers are built, and in fact we can build a half-adder from just two "standard"  logic gates, an AND and an XOR. A full-adder requires 5 "standard"  logic gates. It may be possible to build a full-adder with even fewer  logic gates if we are allowed to use all 15, but I have not checked and I do not know a good way to check yet.

We can use some tools from information theory to lower-bound how many smaller gates we ought to need in general to construct a bigger one. We will consider the space complexity as the amount of information required to specify a gate of a certain size, and compare this to the space complexity of a network of   gates.

The space complexity of a gate is . This grows as

When specifying a gate network, we need to specify the gates, which grows linearly in . We must also consider the information required to specify the connectivity of the network. This is an acyclic directed graph. The number of vertices is , and the number of edges is . The space complexity of this thus grows as the space complexity of a sparse directed graph, which is . Here this ends up being .

But this is not always the case: consider a gate which adds together two -digit binary numbers. This will be a  gate. But to construct this from 1 half-adder and  full-adders requires only  separate standard logic gates. Our value of  here does not satisfy , as . Something is clearly up here. Addition appears to be some sort of special process which is unusually simple.

In this framework, this appears to us as addition being much easier than expected to construct as a network. Being easier than expected to construct as a network also makes it faster to compute, since the number of gates corresponds the number of operations needed to evaluate the process.

comment by Viliam · 2021-07-18T23:25:49.124Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I am curious how to construct the cheapest addition for d digits.

Intuitively, "cheapest" refers to using as few gates as possible, exploting some mathematical properties of binary addition, and perhaps reusing some intermediate results. Though I am not sure how exactly to compare "costs" of gates of different dimensions. (This probably requires some insight into how the hardware of actual computers is built. The mathematical "cost" of gates should approximate the actual costs of producing and operating the hardware. I mean, the ultimate benefit of this exercise would be to design an actual computer that is cheaper or faster or more energy efficient.)

Then the same question for multiplication. Then, for building the entire computer.

Replies from: JBlack
comment by JBlack · 2021-07-20T06:19:55.578Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Even very simply stated problems in boolean circuit optimization turn out to be deeply connected with extremely hard mathematical and computational problems, and in some cases even provably undecidable problems.

I don't hold out very much hope of ever being able to find and prove solutions to most of these questions, even assuming superintelligence.

On the other hand, there are no doubt lots of practical improvements, even very substantial ones, to be made.