eli5: How does a Flip flop work and what is its purpose (electronics)?
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A flip flop is a bistable multivibrator circuit.
It is essentially a circuit that has an output dependent upon current inputs and its previous state. This differs from a standard logic gate in which the output is always dependent upon only the current state of the inputs-the previous state doesn’t matter.
Flip flops are normally clocked so that the output will only update on a clock transition. This and their output dependence on previous states allows them be used as a single bit of memory.
Uses of flip flops:
1) Register memory–a 16-bit register would have 16 flip flops to hold the value of the register
2) Counters–you can connect multiple flip-flops such that they will count upwards in binary
3) Data transfer–you can connect multiple flip-flops to create a shift register
4) Frequency divider–D flip flops can use feedback of their current state to toggle the output once per clock cycle. This effectively halves the clock frequency.
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