When you're insane enough to design something like this, you have to look the part
The K-R Flip Flop was designed with one thing in mind. To be the most completely insane flip-flop that man kind, neigh, HU-man kind, has ever known. Taking nearly 1500 man hours to design, re-design, hang out, play nintendo, download and watch the first two seasons of Family Guy (wait, what were we talking about again? Oh yes, the flip-flop), and draw up the intricate diagrams, the flip-flop was almost never going to see the light of day. Only when two fellow alumni of THS, Shuan Wang and Erik Trainer, came together to design what can only be described as, completely insane.
The K-R Flip Flop almost did not reach completion. A difficult problem arose in the truth table diagram of the K-R Flip Flop. This problem grinded research to a halt. All other aspects of the chip was put on hold until this difficult problem could be solved. The problem arose about what to do when Q was 1 and Qnext was 0. Several solutions were proposed but none of them seemed to work until one day Shuan had an epiphany and quickly wrote down the solution on a paper napkin. He quickly turned over his solution to Erik who finalized the flip flop's truth table.
Diagram and Truth Table courtesy Erik Trainer
The KR flip-flop models the behavior of one Kevin Rawal, a man picking through the bones of his life, wondering how intense bouts of insanity and intermittent normal behavior have impeded his success at UCI. We dedicate this masterful piece of sequential logic to him.
Q represents the state at which the flip-flop is in. Being either high(1) or low(0), the two states are "insane" and "normal", respectively. It is important to note that any time the Rawal input is high, insanity ensues - else no insanity occurs. When the Kevin input is high, Kevin stays in his pristine condition - else he is someone else, and possibly quite volatile. From now on, we will refer to these inputs as K and R for the sake of convenience.
Transition from low to low - The KR flip-flop remains in its state of normalcy. Therefore, we say that the K input is "don't care" and the R input must be low (to stifle any unwanted insanity). It is likely that even if Kevin is not himself, he will still be somewhat normal.
Transition from low to high - The KR flip-flop switches from normal mode to a state of raw, adulterated lunacy. To instigate this transition, the K input must be low and the R input must be high.
Transition from high to low - To ensure that the flip-flop returns to a normal state, the R input must go low, and the K input can be either low or high ("don't care"). The only thing we care about is the R input - it must be reset to 0 in order to prevent an event of catastrophic proportions.
Transition from high to high - Uh oh, spaghettios! The KR flip-flop remains in its current insane state. In this case, we don't care about the K nor the R input. All hell breaks loose, people die, etc.
When presented at the World Symposium on Flip Flops, the pair debuted their newly created flip flop to an astonished crowd of 5,000. Several professors and other notables were on hand to describe how awestruck they were.
"This is quite possibly, the insanest flip flop I have ever encountered!" - Professor Gajski *
"This flip flop will revolutionize flip flopping as we know it" - Professor Tauro *
"Never in all my 35 years of coaching football have I come across a flip flop THAT insane" - Coach Ron Garland *
"Absolutely Diabolical!!!!!!!!!" - Simon from American Idol*
"We made a couple of different versions of the song, and we hadn't picked what version we wanted to give them for the film (Mission Impossible 2). I remember one day I got a call from my manager saying, 'There are a bunch of radio stations playing "Version One" of "I Disappear." How could that get out?' We traced it back to this K-R Flip Flop, and [decided] we better go back to them and send them back into the hole that they came out of." - Lars Ulrich of Metallica *
* - not real quotes