ESPRESSO-SIGNATURE: A New Exact Minimizer for

We present a new algorithm for exact two-level logic optimization that radically improves the Quine-Mc- Cluskey (QM) procedure. The new algorithm derives the cov- ering problem directly and implicitly without generating the set of all prime implicants. It then generates only those prime im- plicants involved in the covering problem. We represent a set of primes by the cube of their intersection. Therefore, the unique set of sets of primes that forms the covering problem can be implicitly represented by a set of cubes that forms a minimum canonical cover. We obtain the minimum canonical cover starting from any initial cover and then derive the cov- ering problem. The method is effective; it improves on the run- time and memory usage of ESPRESSO-EXACT by average factors of 1.78 and 1.19, respectively, on the 114 of 134 benchmark examples that could be completed by ESPRESSO-EXACT. Of the remaining 20 hard problems, we solve 14 exactly. For three of the remaining six, the covering problem is derived but it could not be solved exactly.

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