Fan-in
Appearance
Fan-in is the number of inputs a gate can handle. For instance the fan-in for the AND gate shown in the figure is 3. Physical logic gates with a large fan-in tend to be slower than those with a small fan-in. This is because the complexity of the input circuitry increases the input capacitance of the device. Using logic gates with higher fan-in will help reducing the depth of a logic circuit.
See also
- Fan-out, a related concept, which is the number of logic inputs that a given logic output drives.