This Technical Report gives recommendations, mainly to designers and manufacturers of
integrated circuits, in order to arrive at symbols for devices with a consistent use of mnemonics
and qualifying symbols. It is intended to serve two purposes, namely:
– for white-box symbols, it gives a review of standardized designations;
– for gray-box symbols, it is intended to limit the range of possible variations.
White-box symbols are symbols in which the functional behaviour of an element is fully
described by standardized means; the relevant rules and explanations are to be found in
IEC 60617 in the application notes associated with the symbols S01463 … S01730 (A00269 …
A00315) for binary logic elements, and with the symbols S01748 … S01806 (A00281, A00296,
A00321 … A00330) for analogue elements.
Gray-box symbols are symbols in which the functional behaviour of an element, mostly
because of its complexity, is (partly) described by other means than those used for white-box
symbols, particularly by referring to supporting documentation; the relevant rules and
explanations are to be found in IEC 60617 in the application notes associated with the symbols
S01731 … S01747 (A00317 … A00319).
Where in the following tables the letter W is shown in the second column, this means that the
designation concerned may be used in white-box symbols, as well as in gray-box symbols. A
letter G in the second column means that the designation concerned may only be used in graybox
symbols, or in white-box symbols between square brackets (e.g. [PDN] as additional
information for “power down”). In these tables, the English descriptions appear in the third
column and the French in the fourth, because in many cases designations are derived from
terms in English.
Where the letter m is used, it shall be replaced by the relevant value, identifying number, cycle
length, number of bits or sequential number, as each case demands (with the exception of Am
for gain adjust). Where m1 × m2 is shown, m1 shall be replaced by the number of words and
m2 by the number of bits per word. See symbols S01706 … S01722.