MINI: A Heuristic Approach for Logic Minimization

Abstract

MINI is a heuristic logic minimization technique for many-variable problems. It accepts as input a Boolean logic specification expressed as an input-output table, thus avoiding a long list of minterms. It seeks a minimal implicant solution, without generating all prime implicants, which can be converted to prime implicants if desired. New and effective subprocesses, such as expanding, reshaping, and removing redundancy from cubes, are iterated until there is no further reduction in the solution. The process is general in that it can minimize both conventional logic and logic functions of multi-valued variables.