Intelligent way to find all minterms of F

Theory
1

Hey!
I was thinking - is there a way to describe all the minterms of given function, without describing the whole truth-table?

if the input is long (lets say > 5) the truth table is getting too big, what makes this method pretty hard (i’m not even talking about the fact that SOP/POS are not compact representation of the function).

thank you

2

You would need to specify how the function is represented.
If the function is represented by its truth table, then this representation is already “long”, and you have a “budget” for the minterms (simpy because you have to read the truth table itself).
If a function is represented by a Boolean formula, then it is “hard” to decide if the formula is satisfiable (i.e., if the function is not constant zero).
By “hard” I mean, this is an NP-Complete problem. So we do not know of an efficient way (i.e. polynomial time) to decide.

3

Thank you Guy! that makes sense