Computer-Aided Minimization Procedure for Boolean Functions

This paper describes the salient features of CAMP, a Computer Aided Minimization Procedure for single Boolean functions. The procedure is a divide and conquer algorithm, in which the essential prime implicants are first found, and then the best cover among the selective prime implicants are chosen. A significant feature of the algorithm is that the selection of the most suitable selective prime implicant to cover a minterm is based upon the information associated with the degree and direction of adjacency of the minterm itself. The generation of the complement of the function is not a requirement of the algorithm. The procedure has been implemented in a 250 line Fortran program. For shallow functions consisting mainly of essential prime implicants (EPI´s) and a few selective prime implicants (SPI´s), CAMP produces the exact or near minimal sum of product form. For dense functions consisting of a large number of interconnected cyclic SPI chains, a good minimal solution is obtained by minimizing the complementary function.