Synchronous and Asynchronous Up /Down Counter

ASYNCHRONOUS UP /DOWN COUNTER:

In certain applications a counter must be able to count both up and down. The circuit below is a 3-bit up-down counter. It counts up or down depending on the status of the control signals UP and DOWN. When the UP input is at 1 and the DOWN input is at 0, the NAND network between FF0 and FF1 will gate the non-inverted output (Q) of FF0 into the clock input of FF1. Similarly, Q of FF1 will be gated through the other NAND network into the clock input of FF2. Thus the counter will count up.

When the control input UP is at 0 and DOWN is at 1, the inverted outputs of FF0 and FF1 are gated into the clock inputs of FF1 and FF2 respectively. If the flip-flops are initially reset to 0's, then the counter will go through the following sequence as input pulses are applied. Notice that an asynchronous up-down counter is slower than an up counter or a down counter because of the additional propagation delay introduced by the NAND networks.

SYNCHRONOUS UP /DOWN COUNTER:

The down counter counts in reverse from 1111 to 0000 and then goes to 1111. If we inspect the count cycle, we find that each flip-flop will complement when the previous flip-flops are all 0 (this is the opposite of the up counter). The down counter can be implemented similar to the up counter, except that the AND gate input is taken from Q’ instead of Q. This is shown in the following Figure of a 4-bit up-down counter using T flip-flops.