- Don't-care
In
logic synthesis andlogic simulation a don't care or X value is one value in amulti-valued logic system that denotes an unknown value, or a value that the designer (for whatever reason) does not care about. In theVerilog hardware description language such values are denoted by the letter "X". In theVHDL hardware description language such values are denoted (in the standard logic package) by the letter "X" (forced unknown) or the letter "W" (weak unknown).cite book|title=Vhdl: A Logic Synthesis Approach|author=David Naylor and Simon Jones|date=1997|publisher=Springer|id=ISBN 0412616505|pages=14–15,219,221]An X value does not exist in hardware. In simulation, an X value can result from two or more sources driving a signal simultaneously, or the stable output of a
flip-flop (electronics) not having been reached. In synthesized hardware, however, the actual value of such a signal will be either 0 or 1, but will not be determinable from the circuit's inputs.Synthesis tools can use don't care values to determine where and how to perform area optimization. A synthesis tool can use don't care values to reduce the circuit sizes of
finite state machine s, for example.ee also
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Karnaugh map References
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