1.1.1.3 Class 2 – Direct State Transition and State Output

The Class 2 state machine is a portion of the general state machine where both the next state, $X$, and the outputs, $I$, are determined by the present state alone. The portion of the general state machine included in Class 2 is shown with solid lines in Figure 1-4.

An important concept introduced in this section is the idea of a sequence of states, where one state is followed by another state in a specific sequence. The next-state and output expressions for a Class 2 state machine are:

$X\leftarrow g\left[X\right]$

$I=f\left[X\right]$

An example of a Class 2 state machine could be a simple three-bit hardware counter that cycles through the states in a specific sequence:

$(state 0 \to state 1 \to state 2 \to \cdots \to state 7 \to state 0\to \cdots )$