My 4 Bit Ripple Carry Adder/Subtractor Project

After creating my 1 bit full adder design found in a previous post, I decided to go for something a little more complicated. I wanted to prove to myself that the ripple carry system worked, so the obvious choice is to make a multi bit device. 4 bits seemed like a good amount, it's a value used in some early ALU's so it can be used in a future project. To make it more interesting I added in the ability to make the device a Subtractor at the same time. When you look at the schematic, it only requires one more device per adder, so it's not even an expensive thing to implement, but adds lots of functionality. As with the 1 bit adder, I have attempted to build this adder using only single logic chips.

The first stage is to know the logic circuit, its widely known and can be found pretty easily all over the web. Im not going to explain how it's created (I can always make a separate post on that) but I can describe how to use it. The aim is for the device to take two 4 bit inputs (0 - 15), along with a carry from another adder. So the adder needs to be able to output a value between 0 and 31. In binary this can be shown as 5 bits, so we have 2 outputs. This the S output is a 4 bit bus, and the Co output bumps this up to the 5 bits we need to make 31. A truth table can be made for this but it would be 32 lines long, so too much for this post. You could regard it as a personal challenge if you want to attempt it on your own.

So I got onto Altium and made a schematic of this circuit using some of the low voltage 7400 LVC series individual logic gates that I used on the previous adder I made. They come in SOT23-5 packages which are leaded a nice size to solder. Plus they are a size where it's possible to probe the pins fairly easily. Luckily Altium shows the components as their logic symbols. Below I have shown the first two adders, the third and fourth are basically the same as the second one, which is the idea of the ripple carry adder.

The first two adders of the four found on the board

I also added a few LEDs to show what parts are on and off. This means the user can see the inputs and outputs. These LEDs run off the 5V input voltage, and have 220Ω current limiting resistors in series with them. Also, I have put in some 0.1 inch header pins so it can be attached into a breadboard and maybe even a micro.

The LEDs for the carry bits and outputs

The LEDs for the input bits

As a base of my circuit, I have decided on a double sided 100mm x 100mm board. This is quite big as you can see for the circuit I have made, but gives plenty of space for a soldering iron to get access. As well as this, it gives a nice amount of space for multimeter probes. I also tried to keep the individual logic chips in a similar arrangement as the schematic. This is meant to be used as a learning device, so it's useful for the chips to line up with the diagram. The header pins for the inputs and outputs are placed on opposite sides of the board to make it more obvious for the user to see it. And the pins have designators written on the board so the user can see what each pin does. The input and output busses are placed in fairly logical places, and grouped together. There is no point having all the A inputs intertwined with the B inputs. The pins for the power and ground are on opposite sides with their own headers, only one needs to be connected for it to work. The LEDs that are directly attached to the pins are placed closer to the logic circuitry, but labeled clearly on the silkscreen. Most of the routing to the LEDs is on the underside of the board, else the top could get confusing. All the designators for components have been made half the normal size due to the small amount of parts used in the project. The below images show the PCB layout I created with the top copper being red, bottom copper being blue, and the silkscreen shown in yellow.

Top Copper

As you might be able to see, I have tried to keep all the power on the bottom side of the board. This leaves lots of space for the logic signals on the top, where the user is more likely to see. As you can see, most of the inputs and outputs of the circuit are also on the bottom side. This is because the way the busses work  and input into the adder needs lots of crossing over and would add confusion into the design. This is why labels were used instead.

Bottom Copper

To make it easier to see, I made a larger image of the first and last adder in the series. As you can see, the only real difference in them is that the first has the add/subtract input shown by an LED, whereas the last shows the carry from the previous adder (C0). This is because the A/D bit is attached to all the adders, but the first bit doesn't have a carry bit input. The carry on that adder is the input for the A/S. It serves the function of inverting the first bit, so that it works like 2's complement when in subtract mode.

The layout of the first adder in the series

The layout of the last adder in the series

As noted above I used 7400 LVC series logic gates. The SOT23-5 package chips have the suffix of "BVD". See the datasheets for each of the devices for more information. I have written a simple bill of materials below:

• 12x SN74LVC1G86DBVT - XOR gate
• 8x SN74LVC1G08DBVT - AND gate
• 4x SN74LVC1G32DBVT - OR gate
• 17x DO-214 LED's
• 17x 0805 220Ω resistors
• 6x 5-pin 0.1" header pins

The main downside to this type of adder is that is is very slow. Especially when you get to high bit amounts that you are trying to add. This adder will take at least 4 times as long as a single adder to add the two numbers together. This problem is known as propagation delay, each logic chip will take a very short time to compute the output. Although this time is not perceivable by the human eye, if there are 100's of logic gates in a row, then the delays start to add up and be a problem. If this circuit is to be used in a computer, it could need to make calculations thousands, or maybe millions of times a second, and a carry bit adder is not generally good at that. There are other, faster adders that I will show in a future post.