Digital Design- Moris Mano - 5th Edition
To determine the Prime Implicants and Essential Prime Implicants of a Boolean Function follow the below steps :
1. Place the minterms into the corresponding cells as 1's
2. Group them as maximum possible number of adjacent ones which can be written in powers of 2
i.e 2^4 = 16 ones , 2^3 =8 ones , 2^2= 4 ones, 2^1 = 2 ones. Form all possible groups
3. Name the groups as loop1 , loop2 ., etc and write corresponding simplified expression which are
called Prime Implicants
4. For each and every Prime Implicants- check whether any one of its minterm is covered only once -
if its so then that Prime Implicants become Essential Prime Implicants. otherwise , if all the
minterms are covered by more than one loop, then it is not an Essential Prime Implicant
