QM Tabulation Method

With Don’t cares

 QM Tabulation Method

A tabular approach for minimization was proposed in the

1950s by Willard Quine and Edward McCluskey. It
became popular under the name Quine-McCluskey
method.
 Procedure of Quine-McCluskey Tabular Method
Follow these steps for simplifying Boolean functions using
Quine-McClukey tabular method.
• Step 1 − Arrange the given min terms in an ascending
order and make the groups based on the number of ones
present in their binary representations. So, there will be at
most ‘n+1’ groups if there are ‘n’ Boolean variables in a
Boolean function or ‘n’ bits in the binary equivalent of min
terms.
• Step 2 − Compare the min terms present in successive
groups. If there is a change in only one-bit position, then take
the pair of those two min terms. Place this symbol ‘_’ in the
differed bit position and keep the remaining bits as it is.
• Step 3 − Repeat step2 with newly formed terms till we get
all prime implicants.
 Procedure of Quine-McCluskey Tabular Method
• Step 4 − Formulate the prime implicant table. It consists of
set of rows and columns. Prime implicants can be placed in row
wise and min terms can be placed in column wise. Place ‘1’ in
the cells corresponding to the min terms that are covered in
each prime implicant.
• Step 5 − Find the essential prime implicants by observing each
column. If the min term is covered only by one prime implicant,
then it is essential prime implicant. Those essential prime
implicants will be part of the simplified Boolean function.
• Step 6 − Reduce the prime implicant table by removing the row
of each essential prime implicant and the columns
corresponding to the min terms that are covered in that
essential prime implicant. Repeat step 5 for Reduced prime
implicant table. Stop this process when all min terms of given
Boolean function are over.
f(W,X,Y,Z)=∑m(2,6,8,9,10,11,14,15) using Quine-McClukey
tabular method.

The given Boolean function is in sum of min terms form.

It is having 4 variables W, X, Y & Z.

The given min terms are 2, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14 and 15.

The ascending order of these min terms based on the number of

ones present in their binary equivalent is 2, 8, 6, 9, 10, 11, 14
and 15.
 f(W,X,Y,Z)=∑m(2,6,8,9,10,11,14,15)
The given min terms are arranged into 4 groups based on the number of
ones present in their binary equivalents.
 The following table shows the possible merging of min
terms from adjacent groups.
The min terms, which are differed in only one-bit position from adjacent groups are merged. That differed bit is
represented with this symbol, ‘-‘. In this case, there are three groups and each group contains combinations of
two min terms.
The following table shows the possible merging of min term pairs from
adjacent groups.
The successive groups of min term pairs, which are differed
in only one-bit position are merged. That differed bit is
represented with this symbol, ‘-‘.

In this case, there are two groups and each group contains
combinations of four min terms.

Here, these combinations of 4 min terms are available in

two rows. So, we can remove the repeated rows.

The reduced table after removing the

redundant rows is shown below.
Further merging of the combinations of min terms from
adjacent groups is not possible, since they are differed in
more than one-bit position. There are three rows in the
above table. So, each row will give one prime implicant.
Therefore, the prime implicants are YZ’, WX’ & WY.
The prime implicants are placed in row wise and min terms are placed in column wise. 1s are
placed in the common cells of prime implicant rows and the corresponding min term columns.
The min terms 2 and 6 are covered only by one prime implicant YZ’. So, it is an essential prime
implicant. This will be part of simplified Boolean function.
Now, remove this prime implicant row and the corresponding min term columns. When we remove
YZ’ in ROW, Remove Columns containing minterms 2,6,10 and 14 covered by the
Essential Prime Implicant YZ’.

The reduced prime implicant table.

The min terms 8 and 9 are covered only by one prime implicant WX’. So, it is an essential
prime implicant. This will be part of simplified Boolean function. Now, remove this prime
implicant row and the corresponding min term columns. The reduced prime implicant table is
shown below.

The min term 15 is covered only by one prime implicant WY. So, it is an essential
prime implicant. This will be part of simplified Boolean function.
In this example problem, we got three prime implicants and all the three are
essential. Therefore, the simplified Boolean function is
F(W,X,Y,Z)= YZ’ + WX’ + WY.
 Example 2
• There are no don’t-care conditions. Place the minterms into groups such that the minterms in each
group have the same number of 1s, and sort the groups by the number of 1s.
• Thus, it will be necessary to compare each minterm in a given group only with all minterms in the
immediately preceding group.
• The minterms are ordered in this way in list 1. (Note that we indicated the decimal equivalents of the
minterms as well, to facilitate our discussion.)
• The minterms, which are also called 0-cubes (all literals are having value 0), can be combined into 1-
cubes (only one of the literals in the minterm will have 1) shown in list 2.
 Example 2

To make the entries easily understood we indicated the minterms that are combined to form each 1-cube.
Next, we check if the 0-cubes are included in the 1-cubes and place a check mark beside each cube that is
included. We now generate 2-cubes from the 1-cubes in list 2. The only 2-cube that can be generated is xx00,
which is placed in list 3. Again, the check marks are placed against the 1-cubes that are included in the 2-cube.
Since there exists just one 2-cube, there can be no 3-cubes for this function. The cubes in each list without a
check mark are the prime implicants of f . Therefore, the set, P, of prime implicants is
 Determination of Minimum Cover
Having generated the set of all prime implicants, it is necessary to choose a minimum
cost subset that covers all minterms for which f = 1. As a simple measure, we will
assume that the cost is directly proportional to the number of inputs to all gates, which
means to the number of literals in the prime implicants chosen to implement the
function.

To find a minimum-cost cover, we construct a prime implicant cover table in which

there is a row for each prime implicant and a column for each minterm that must be
covered.

Then we place check marks to indicate the minterms covered by each prime implicant
Figure (a)shows the table for the prime implicants derived in previous figure. If
there is a single check mark in some column of the cover table, then the prime
implicant that covers the minterm of this column is essential and it must be
included in the final cover. Such is the case with p6 , which is the only prime
implicant that covers minterms 0 and 4. The next step is to remove the row(s)
corresponding to the essential prime implicants and the column(s) covered by
them. Hence we remove p6 and columns 0, 4, 8, and 12, which leads to the
table in Figure (b).
Now, we can use the concept of row dominance to reduce the cover table. Observe that p1 covers only minterm
10 while p2 covers both 10 and 11. We say that p2 dominates p1 . Since the cost of p2 is the same as the cost of p1
, it is prudent to choose p2 rather than p1 , so we will remove p1 from the table. Similarly, p5 dominates p3 , hence
we will remove p3 from the table. Thus, we obtain the table in Figure (c). Here p2 is called dominating row while
p1 is called dominated row
This table indicates that we must choose p2 to cover minterm 10
and p5 to cover minterm 13, which also takes care of covering
minterms 11 and 15. (So p4 is not needed in the final minimal cover)
Therefore, the final cover is (including the epi p6)
• In this example we used the concept of row dominance to reduce the cover
table.
• We removed the dominated rows because they cover fewer minterms and
the cost of their prime implicants is the same as the cost of the prime
implicants of the dominating rows.
• However, a dominated row should not be removed if the cost of its prime
implicant is less than the cost of the dominating row’s prime implicant.
The tabular method can be summarized as follows:
1. Starting with a list of cubes that represent the minterms where f = 1 or a don’t-care
condition, generate the prime implicants by successive pairwise comparisons of the
cubes.
2. Derive a cover table which indicates the minterms where f = 1 that are covered by
each prime implicant.
3. Include the essential prime implicants (if any) in the final cover and reduce the
table by removing both these prime implicants and the covered minterms.
4. Use the concept of row and column dominance to reduce the cover table further. A
dominated row is removed only if the cost of its prime implicant is greater than or
equal to the cost of the dominating row’s prime implicant.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until the cover table is either empty or no further reduction
of the table is possible.
6. If the reduced cover table is not empty, then use the branching approach (refer
next slide) to determine the remaining prime implicants that should be included in a
minimum cost cover.
RECALL - The process of finding a minimum-cost circuit involves
the following steps:
1. Generate all prime implicants for the given function f .
2. Find the set of essential prime implicants.
3. If the set of essential prime implicants covers all valuations for which f = 1, then
this set is the desired cover of f .
Otherwise, determine the nonessential prime implicants that should be added to form a
complete minimum-cost cover.
The choice of nonessential prime implicants to be included in the cover is governed by the
cost considerations. This choice is often not obvious. Indeed, for large functions there may
exist many possibilities, and some heuristic approach (i.e., an approach that considers only
a subset of possibilities but gives good results most of the time) has to be used.
One such approach is to arbitrarily select one nonessential prime implicant and include it in
the cover and then determine the rest of the cover. Next, another cover is determined
assuming that this prime implicant is not in the cover. The costs of the resulting covers are
compared, and the less-expensive cover is chosen for implementation.
 References:
• Quine McCluskey Method – GeeksforGeeks for more exercises
• Quine McCluskey (Tabular) Method Example (electronicsandcommuni
cations.com)
QM Tabulation Method with Don’t
Cares