Flip-flop (electronics)
In electronics, a flip-flop or latch is a circuit that has two stable states and can be used to store state information – a bistable multivibrator. The circuit can be made to change state by signals applied to one or more control inputs and will have one or two outputs. It is the basic storage element in sequential logic. Flip-flops and latches are fundamental building blocks of digital electronics systems used in computers, communications, and many other types of systems. Flip-flops and latches are used as data storage elements. A flip-flop is a device which stores a single bit (binary digit) of data; one of its two states represents a "one" and the other represents a "zero". Such data storage can be used for storage of state, and such a circuit is described as sequential logic in electronics. When used in a finite-state machine, the output and next state depend not only on its current input, but also on its current state (and hence, previous inputs). It can also be used for counting of pulses, and for synchronizing variably-timed input signals to some reference timing signal. Flip-flops can be either level-triggered (asynchronous, transparent or opaque) or edge-triggered (synchronous, or clocked). The term flip-flop has historically referred generically to both level-triggered and edge-triggered circuits that store a single bit of data using gates. Recently, some authors reserve the term flip-flop exclusively for discussing clocked circuits; the simple ones are commonly called transparent latches. Using this terminology, a level-sensitive flip-flop is called a transparent latch, whereas an edge-triggered flip-flop is simply called a flip-flop. Using either terminology, the term "flip-flop" refers to a device that stores a single bit of data, but the term "latch" may also refer to a device that stores any number of bits of data using a single trigger. The terms "edge-triggered", and "level-triggered" may be used to avoid ambiguity. When a level-triggered latch is enabled it becomes transparent, but an edge-triggered flip-flop's output only changes on a single type (positive going or negative going) of clock edge. (Wikipedia).
