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Karnaugh Maps

steve_bank

Diabetic retinopathy and poor eyesight. Typos ...
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Before the rise of cheap computers people came up with brilliant techniques in engineering that had great impact but are historicaly unheralded. Bode and Nichols mathematicians from Bell Labs came up with elegant, simple, powerful graphical techniques to design and analyze control systems. Still used today.


Karnaugh Maps

For multiple inputs and multiple output digital system it became near impossible to synthesize a logical expression from a truth table by inspection.

Used to be common by hand, now automated by software. Videos on the net if interested.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnaugh_map

The Karnaugh map (KM or K-map) is a method of simplifying Boolean algebra expressions. Maurice Karnaugh introduced it in 1953[1][2] as a refinement of Edward Veitch's 1952 Veitch chart,[3][4] which actually was a rediscovery of Allan Marquand's 1881 logical diagram[5] aka Marquand diagram[4] but with a focus now set on its utility for switching circuits.[4] Veitch charts are therefore also known as Marquand–Veitch diagrams,[4] and Karnaugh maps as Karnaugh–Veitch maps (KV maps).

The Karnaugh map reduces the need for extensive calculations by taking advantage of humans' pattern-recognition capability.[1] It also permits the rapid identification and elimination of potential race conditions.

The required Boolean results are transferred from a truth table onto a two-dimensional grid where, in Karnaugh maps, the cells are ordered in Gray code,[6][4] and each cell position represents one combination of input conditions, while each cell value represents the corresponding output value. Optimal groups of 1s or 0s are identified, which represent the terms of a canonical form of the logic in the original truth table.[7] These terms can be used to write a minimal Boolean expression representing the required logic.

Karnaugh maps are used to simplify real-world logic requirements so that they can be implemented using a minimum number of physical logic gates. A sum-of-products expression can always be implemented using AND gates feeding into an OR gate, and a product-of-sums expression leads to OR gates feeding an AND gate.[8] Karnaugh maps can also be used to simplify logic expressions in software design. Boolean conditions, as used for example in conditional statements, can get very complicated, which makes the code difficult to read and to maintain. Once minimised, canonical sum-of-products and product-of-sums expressions can be implemented directly using AND and OR logic operators.[9] Diagrammatic and mechanical methods for minimizing simple logic expressions have existed since at least the medieval times. More systematic methods for minimizing complex expressions began to be developed in the early 1950s, but until the mid to late 1980s the Karnaugh map was the most common used in practice.[10]

https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/te...rnaugh-maps-truth-tables-boolean-expressions/
 
In electronics it was the main method for designing logic from a truth table. Superseded by cheap computers and siftware.
 
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