To define what a
combinatorial circuit does, we can use a logic expression
or an expression for short. Such an expression uses the two
constants 0 and 1, variables such as x,
y, and z (sometimes with suffixes) as names of
inputs and outputs, and the operators + (which stands
for or), * (which stands for and, and
is usually replaced as usual with juxtaposition), and a horizontal
bar (which stands for not). As usual, multiplication is
considered to have higher priority than addition. Parentheses are
used to modify the priority.
Examples:
Correspondence between expressions and combinatorial circuits
Each expression has a trivial corresponding combinatorial
circuit. For instance, the expressions in the example above,
correspond to the following circuits:
Power of logic expressions
A valid question is: can logic expressions describe all
possible combinatorial circuits?. The answer is yes
and here is why:
You can trivially convert the
truth table for an arbitrary circuit into an expression. The
expression will be in the form of a sum of products of variables and
there inverses. Each row with output value of 1 of the
truth table corresponds to one term in the sum. In such a term, a
variable having a 1 in the truth table will be
uninverted, and a variable having a 0 in the truth
table will be inverted.
Take the following truth table for example:
x y z | f
---------
0 0 0 | 0
0 0 1 | 0
0 1 0 | 1
0 1 1 | 0
1 0 0 | 1
1 0 1 | 0
1 1 0 | 0
1 1 1 | 1
The corresponding expression is:
Since you can describe any combinatorial circuit with a truth
table, and you can describe any truth table with an expression, you
can describe any combinatorial circuit with an expression.
Simplicity of logic expressions
There are many logic expressions (and therefore many circuits)
that correspond to a certain truth table, and therefore to a certain
function computed. For instance, the following two expressions
compute the same function:
The left one requires two gates, one and-gate and one
or-gate. The second expression requires two and-gates
and one or-gate. It seems obvious that the first one is
preferable to the second one. However, this is not always the case.
It is not always true that the number of gates is the only way, nor
even the best way, to determine simplicity.
We have, for instance, assumed that gates are ideal. In reality,
the signal takes some time to propagate through a gate. We call this
time the gate delay. We might be interested in circuits
that minimize the total gate delay, in other words, circuits that
make the signal traverse the fewest possible gates from input to
output. Such circuits are not necessarily the same ones that require
the smallest number of gates. |