Edward McCluskey has died

[drallison]

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2016/february/ed-mccluskey-obit-022516.html

[weinzierl]

Should be McCluskey in the title. He's one half of the Quine-McCluskey algorithm, an efficient algorithm that basically does what a Karnaugh map can do (minimization of boolean functions).

[signa11 → weinzierl]

> an efficient algorithm that basically does what a Karnaugh map can do

i was under the impression that BDD's are the current state of the art for minimization of boolean-functions. no ?

[raverbashing → signa11]

Ah good, I didn't know about them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_decision_diagram

It seems the issue is that BDDs are more modern and more easily computed automatically

(Funnily enough neither Karnaugh maps or the QMC page point to BDDs except in an external link)

[signa11 → raverbashing]

don-knuth (yes *that guy) has a fascicle here: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/fasc1b.ps.gz

[weinzierl → signa11]

Interesting, that was new to me. Can you recommend a BDD library forBoolean minimization? I'm specifically interested in three level minimization (AND, OR, XOR)

[kickingvegas]

Rest in peace Edward McCluskey. It can't be overstated how much of breakthrough the Quine-McCluskey algorithm was for building computers. Logic synthesis programs used to design a computer's circuits would never have gotten off the ground without it.