How Computers Calculate - the ALU: Crash Course Computer Science #5

Today we’re going to talk about a fundamental part of all modern computers. The thing that basically everything else uses - the Arithmetic and Logic Unit (or the ALU). The ALU may not have to most exciting name, but it is the mathematical brain of a computer and is responsible for all the calculations your computer does! And it’s actually not that complicated. So today we’re going to use the binary and logic gates we learned in previous episodes to build one from scratch, and then we’ll use our newly minted ALU when we construct the heart of a computer, the CPU, in episode 7. *CORRECTION* We got our wires crossed with the Intel 4004, which we discuss later. The 74181 was introduced by Texas Instruments in 1970 but appeared in technical manuals around 1969. The design of the 74181, like most of the 74xx/74xxx series, was an open design which was manufactured by many other companies - Fairchild was one such manufacturer. They produced a chip, the Fairchild 9341, which was pin-