The physical limitations of complementary metal-oxide semiconductor style="font-family:Verdana;">?(CMOS) technology have led many researchers to consider other alternative technologies. Quantum-dot cellular automate (QCA), single electron tunneling (SET), tunneling phase logic (TPL), spintronic devices, etc., are some of the nanotechnologies that are being considered as possible replacements for CMOS. In these nanotechnologies, the basic logic units used to implement circuits are majority and/or minority gates. Several majority/minority logic circuit synthesis methods have been proposed. In this paper, we give a comparative study of the existing majority/minority logic circuit synthesis methods that are capable of synthesizing multi-input multi-output Boolean functions. Each of these methods is discussed in detail. The optimization priorities given to different factors such as gates, levels, inverters, etc., vary with technologies. Based on these optimization factors, the results obtained from different synthesis methods are compared. The paper also analyzes the optimization capabilities of different methods and discusses directions for future research in the synthesis of majority/minority logic networks.
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