New Polymorphic NAND/XOR Gate

Polymorphic digital circuits are circuits composed of polymorphic (multifunctional) as well as ordinary gates. In addition to its standard logic function (such as NAND), a polymorphic gate exhibits another logic function which is activated under a specific condition, for example, when Vdd, temperature, illumination or a special signal reaches a certain level. This paper describes newly proposed two-input gate for polymorphic circuit. The gate produces NAND or XOR function according to a special signal. The proposed gate is effective in terms of area overhead – it consists of 9 transistors only, while corresponding circuit employing conventional gates consists of more than 10 transistors. Key-Words: hardware engineering, digital circuits, CMOS logic gates, polymorphic electronics, VLSI, reconfigurable