Functional completeness: NOT, OR, AND from NOR — NOR gate

corethe second universal gate

Answer

3 NOR gates realising A · B

Why this example is worth doing

NOR is universal exactly as NAND is, but the gate counts are transposed: AND is the expensive one here at three gates while OR costs two. That asymmetry decides real designs — a function whose minimal form is a product of sums maps cheaply onto NOR and expensively onto NAND, and vice versa. The page states the rule of thumb that SOP suits NAND and POS suits NOR, which is the single most useful thing to remember about the two families.

Try your own input in the NOR gate. Truth table, symbol and algebraic form for (A + B)′, the other universal gate.

How the answer is reached

Gate list

Gate list — columns Node, Gate, Inputs
NodeGateInputs
g1norA, A
g2norB, B
g3norg1, g2

NOR-only realisation

A ↓ A ↓ (B ↓ B)A · B3 NOR gates, verified by reading the network back out.

Truth table

Truth table — columns #, A, B, A ↓ A ↓ (B ↓ B)
#ABA ↓ A ↓ (B ↓ B)
0000
1010
2100
3111

Compare with

Open the NOR gate

This input is entered in the tool itself — it is too rich for a link to carry.

Note:

Notation this page assumes

  • Symbols: · is AND, + is OR, ⊕ is XOR, a prime or an overline is NOT. The field also takes ∧ ∨ ¬ ~ ! & | and the words.
  • Operator precedence, tightest first: NOT, then AND (including juxtaposition), then XOR/XNOR, then NAND/NOR, then OR, then IMPLIES, then IFF.
  • Gate symbols follow whichever standard the header toggle is set to: ANSI/IEEE Std 91-1984 distinctive shapes, or IEC 60617-12 rectangles.

Sources

  • ANSI/IEEE Std 91-1984, Graphic Symbols for Logic Functions
  • IEC 60617-12, Graphical Symbols for Diagrams — Binary Logic Elements