Nondeterministic AND-EXOR minimisation by using rewrite rules and simulated annealing

A new AND-EXOR minimisation procedure is presented, which is able to optimise both completely and incompletely specified logic functions, with one or several outputs. It is based on the use of an annealing process to select the rewrite rule that should be applied to the current expression of the function to be minimised. Unlike other reported procedures, this procedure implements a nondeterministic method which, without imposing restrictions on the solution space, allows the user to establish a trade-off between the quality of the solution and the time required to find it. A comparison with other previously reported procedures is also made by using both benchmark functions and a set of randomly generated functions, thus ensuring that results with statistical relevance are obtained