Fast transform procedure for the generation of near-minimal covers of Boolean functions

A new and efficient technique for the generation of near-minimal covers of Boolean functions is described. For the identification of all prime implicants covering a particular minterm, use is made of a fast in-place transformation. Crucial points in such covering procedures are the decision which of the minterms to process next and which of its prime implicants to use in the near-minimal cover. Both these problems are handled by a weighting transformation. A computer program QUAMIN, implementing the method, has been compared to other programs. It is shown that the new method performs well with respect to accuracy, computer time and storage requirements.