Implicants and Prime Implicants (3)

·         An Implicant of a function is a product term of the function.

·         A product term is called an implicant, because whenever it takes the value 1, the function also takes the value 1, hence the term implies the function’s value.

·         A Prime Implicant of a function is an implicant of the function not contained (entirely!) in any “larger” implicant.

Example

·         Consider function f(a,b,c,d) whose K-map is shown below.  

·         c’d’ is not a prime implicant because c’d’ is contained in d’.

·         bcd is not a prime implicant because bcd is contained in bc.

·         d’, bc, and ab’c’ are prime implicants.