DON’T CARE

CONDITIONS

1
Outline
Don’t Care Condition
 Definition

 Example

2
AN INPUT COMBINATION
FOR WHICH THERE IS NO
SPECIFIC REQUIRED
OUTPUT IS KNOWN AS
DON’T CARE CONDITION.

3
■ There may be a combination of input values which

– will never occur

– if they do occur, the output is of no concern.

■ The function value for such combinations is called a don't care.

■ They are denoted with X. Each X may be arbitrarily assigned the value 0
or 1 in an implementation.

■ Don’t cares can be used to further simplify a function.

Example: A logic function having the binary codes for the BCD digits as its
inputs. Only the codes for 0 through 9 are used. The six codes, 1010 through
1111 never occur, so the output values for these codes are “x” to represent
“don’t cares.” 4
Simplify the boolean function -
F(a, b, c, d)=∑(1, 3, 7, 11, 15)+∑d(0, 2, 5)

cd cd
ab 00 11 10 ab 00 01 11 10
00 X 01 1 X 00 X 1 1 X
1
01 0 X 1 0 01 0 X 1 0
11 0 0 1 0 11 0 0 1 0
10 0 0 1 0 10 0 0 1 0

F=cd+a´b´
F=cd+a´d