All the flip-flops discussed earlier are said to be transparent, because any chance in input is immediately accepted and

the output changes accordingly. Since they consist of logic gates along with feedback they are also regarded as asynchronous flip-flops (SR&D) (without clock) State Qn + 1 is due to the inputs present during ON time of (n + 1)th pulse i.e at t = nT. In the analysis and discussion we adopt the designation Qn to represent present state which is the state before the ON time of (n + 1)th pulse or state just before the time t = nT and Qn + 1 as next state i.e. the state just after the ON time of (n + 1)th clock pulse. Thus Qn+1 represents the state(or output) in bit time n and Qn represents the output Q in bit time n + 1. Finite state machine can be designed to control processes of digital nature (discrete in time, binary in variable values) which can be described by Boolean algebra. This is comparable with but different from the PID controllers which are used to control processes of analog nature (continuous in both time and variable values) described by differential equations. Registers are the group of flip-flops (single bit storage element). The simplest type of register is a data register, which is used for the temporary storage of data. In its simplest form, it consists of a set of N D flip-flops, all sharing a common clock. All of the digits in the N bit data word are connected to the data register by an N line data bus A common form of register used in many types of logic circuits is a shift register. Registers like counters, are sequential circuits and as they employ flip flops they possess memory; but memory is not the only requirement of a shift register. The function of storage of binary data can be very well performed by a simple register. Shift registers are required to do much more than that. They are required to store binary data momentarily until it is utilized for instance, by a computer, microprocessor, etc. Sometimes data is required to be presented to a device in a manner which may be different from the way in which it is fed to a shift register. For instance, shift register can present data to a device in a serial or parallel form, irrespective of the manner in which it is fed to a shift register. Data can also be manipulated within the shift register, so that it is presented to a device in the required form. These devices can also shift left or right and it is this capability which gives them the name of shift register. Shift registers have found considerable application in arithmatic operations. Since moving a binary number one bit to the left is equivalent to multiplying the number by 2 and moving the number one bit position to the right amounts to dividing the number by 2. Thus, multiplications and divisions can be accomplished by shifting data bits. Shift registers find considerable application in generating a sequence of control pulses. On the leading edge of the first clock pulse, the signal on the DATA input is latched in the first flip flop. On the leading edge of the next clock pulse, the contents of the first flip- flop is stored in the second flip-flop, and the signal which is present at the DATA input is stored is the first flip-flop, etc. Because the data is entered one bit at a time, this called a serial-in shift register. Since there is only one output, and data leaves the shift register one bit at a time, then it is also a serial out shift register. (Shift registers are named by their method of input and output; either serial or parallel.) Parallel input can be provided through the use of the preset and clear inputs to the flip-flop. The parallel loading of the flip flop can be synchronous (i.e., occurs with the clock pulse) or asynchronous (independent of the clock pulse) depending on the design of the shift register.