Student "edition" found at {csi dot journalspace dot com}.

Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

In the first meeting of my Computer Systems Organization lecture for the fourth week of the third term, we had more practice with K-mapping for three variables or inputs, particularly going through all the steps in determining all aspects of a Boolean function.

From the function, for instance, they could already make a truth table of all its possible inputs and outputs.

From the truth table, they can fill up the K-map, four by two for three variables. From the K-map, they can get the simplified function.

If the simplified form does not match the original, then they can prove they are the same by using the theorems and identities to change one to the other.

They had to do the same with the complement, which, again they could get by inverting all the outputs in the truth table, or by applying the theorems, particularly de Morgan’s on the original function.

One further step that I did not give samples on was going from the function to the circuit, but they were already familiar with that from the first meeting.

I also mentioned to the class that we would have our first quiz in one week’s time, which means two meetings from that point.

For some of the students it was their first encounter with the concepts because they were absent during the meeting before.

I also used an easier labeling for the columns and rows of the K-map, applying the sequence of binary numbers where in only one bit changes value from one to the other.

This, I told them, is also easier for them to go through all the values when they are checking their function in the lab.

It was just a matter of seeing the common values among the groups of exponents of two that they made in the K-map, and seeing what variables are common. If the common variable has a value of zero, then they get the prime or not of that variable.

Session 971 could not match the original function with the simplified one. Class dismissed.