Talk:Espresso heuristic logic minimizer

Minilog

What is Minilog? TeamX 05:47, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

How can Minilog be "public domain", yet there are restrictions? TeamX 05:48, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

See the website for a brief description of the program. Since it is a didactical tool, the only restriction is that it is not intended for (nor is it suited for) commercial use. WimdeValk 13:15, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

That's not public domain. Public domain means no copyright whatsoever. -12.38.10.178 (talk) 15:17, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Removed the copyright statement. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a place for free advertisement. 82.171.42.214 (talk) 20:12, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Introduction

Reads like a marketing droid wrote it. Much of it is off-topic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.147.225.69 (talk) 18:10, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually it reads like the introduction of an article in an EE rag. It is non-encyclopedic --71.38.172.8 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:43, 31 January 2010 (UTC).

Questions

• What is meant with on-cover, off-cover, dc-cover etc.?
• Its name reflects the way of instantly making a cup of fresh coffee. ..?
• For implementing a function in multi-level logic, the minimization result is optimized by factorization and mapped onto the available basic logic cells in the target technology
  • Factorization? Available basic logic cell?

Thanks, --Abdull (talk) 14:44, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

The on-cover of a logic function is the set of input vectors for which the function value is true; the off-cover is the set of input vectors for which the function value is false; the dc-cover is the set of input vectors for which the function value is regarded as not relevant (don't care). The Espresso minimizer produces its result very quickly compared to other methods, therefore the analogy to espresso coffee that is being brewed instantaneously as well. The question about factorization can't be answered in a few sentences; so for that you are referred to the literature, e.g. ref.1-p.348, ref.4-p.100 or ref.5-p.126. For available logic cells you might consult a standard cell library manual. In general it is a good idea to visit a university library and find some proper text books on digital design principles to have such basic questions answered. WimdeValk (talk) 01:39, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Espresso implementation

Would it be appropriate to link to the implementation of this algorithm? It seems that, considering the program is freely available (and I believe public domain), that it should be easier to find the canonical implementation of it, and Wikipedia seems like an appropriate place to make such information available. This is the link, should anyone with higher (read: any) credentials want to make the appropriate edit:

Espresso from UC Berkeley -- Gatlin —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.197.152.30 (talk) 02:14, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for this link, as it provides access to the program's source code. Of course it is appropriate to add it to the article. Actually you can do it yourself, as basically anyone is allowed to. However I will do it for you. WimdeValk (talk) 21:53, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Xor and factoring capabilities

There is no mention in the article whether the minimizer has xor or factoring capabilities. Minimizers often reduce expressions to sum of products or product of sums form, but these are not always the simplest expressions. Xor and factoring capabilities can often further simplify expressions. For example, (A' B + A B') reduces to (A xor B) replacing three operations with one, and factoring out a term by the distributive law means that factored out term reduces operations with each of the distributed terms to one operation. (this may not always be true in circuit design applications, but it is true under other circumstances such as boolean operations in a computer program). 76.254.65.241 (talk) 08:11, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Espresso is a pure two-layer sum-of-products or product-of-sums minimizer without xor or factoring capabilities. WimdeValk (talk) 23:37, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

"cube"

Is "cube" in quotes because really it is a n-dimensional hypercube, where n is the number of input variables? Whatever it means, it could use elaboration. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Intellec7 (talk • contribs) 21:02, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

No description, terrible introduction

This is currently a very poor article. It talks about a seemingly advanced heuristic algorithm for minimizing logic components and yet it introduces assuming not even basic prior knowledge of digital design. It talks about other algorithms - namely Karnaugh Maps and it's computer implementation, the Quine–McCluskey algorithms - and it after all that - it does not even describe the algorithm itself!

So we have all this article talking about all the subjects building up on it, not to have a description on the algorithm, except for that it's name derives from inspiration from espresso preparation. Yes, it's usefulness and ubiquity is always discussed, again without much mentioning on how it works.

A description and a clean up of the introduction is much needed! --186.220.200.15 (talk) 03:21, 10 March 2012 (UTC)