< hardware > (PAL) A family of fuse-programmable logic integrated circuits originally developed by MMI . Registered or combinatorial output functions are modelled in a sum of products form. Each output is a sum (logical or) of a fixed number of products (logical and) of the input signals. This structure is well suited for automatic generation of programming patterns by logic compilers.
PAL devices are programmed by blowing the fuses permanently using overvoltage.
Today, more complex devices based on the same original architecture are available (CPLD's for Complex PLD's) that incorporate the equivalent of several original PAL chips. PAL chips are, however, still popular due to their high speed.
Generic Array Logic devices are reprogrammable and contain more logic gates .
(1995-12-09)