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One thing that's not very clear from this article, is: "When do the actions (lambda) trigger?"

Does it happen when you enter a state? Does it happen when you leave a state? Does it happen when the clock fires?

Is the Moore machine description mute on the question?

LionKimbro

Well, I know what a clocked sequential system (a kind of Moore machine) would do. I'll stick that in the article, and hope that any theoreticians correct any mistakes. --DavidCary 01:28, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ah: I see: So an important part of a Moore machine is that it is like electronic circuitry, and has a continuing output signal. It's not like: "Oh, you entered a state, here's your event registering that you entered the state." LionKimbro

The article seems to claim that there are some Moore machines that are *not* clocked sequential systems. I can't think of any -- can you? --DavidCary 01:28, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I've simulated them in software before. It's pretty easy to model entry triggers in software. But things make so much more sense now, that I understand it's a continuous output signal, and that "Moore machine" is intended for electronic component circuits, where it's not a burden to have a continuous output signal.

What was the phrase you use: "clocked sequential system." I think this could be clearer in the text of the page. Actually, I think this could be clearer throughout computer science textbooks in general, which briefly mention the Moore machine, but don't always hook it up with the concept of electronics, "clocked sequential systems," etc.,.

LionKimbro

I am actually most familiar with Moore machines from a context unrelated to electronic circuits, clocked or otherwise. There is a large literature on Moore machines representing strategies and playing games against one another. In particular, there are dozens of papers about Moore machines playing tournaments of repeated Prisoners' Dilemma. There are also lots of papers on evolving Moore machines to solve a problem using genetic algorithms. I think the machines in question are almost always virtual. 64.142.87.46 21:25, 23 March 2007 (UTC)J. Andrew Hoerner[reply]

I would consider a game where players (or sides) take turns, as a clocked sequential circuit, the change of turns being the clock. And it seems that in chess, this can be a physical clock. Not discussed here, but such systems can have both race condition and metastability problems. Gah4 (talk) 21:52, 21 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Is the Moore Machine really a 7-tuple machine? I thought it didn't have accepting states since it was a transducer (it generates an output for a given input) rather than an acceptor (returns true or false if the input is an acceptable string). I'm just learning about these things, so I don't really have the authority to change it, but all the other sites I've been referencing say that Moore Machines have no accepting states. Is there anyone out there with the authority and confidence on the subject to change it? previously unsigned comment left by User:150.208.12.223

A more machine can have accepting states - that would be a sequence detector type of machine. I really dunno what this transducer garbage is all about - never heard of that in this context, and all the links to transducer don't make any sense in the context of a sequential circuit - except in the most very basic and useless way. Fresheneesz 02:49, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The "formal definition" looks kinda ridculous. One thing that bothers me - an initial state is not neccessary to define a machine. A machine takes inputs (the starting state *and* and input sequence), and produces outputs. The starting state can be considered an input, and is not neccessarily part of the machine. Fresheneesz 02:53, 15 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The formal model contradicts the statement that a Moore machine doesn't use input symbols (and in fact, the formal statement looks like it was lifted straight from the corresponding section for Mealy machines.) 213.41.128.67 15:59, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean that "A transition function {\displaystyle T:S\times \Sigma \rightarrow S}T : S \times \Sigma \rightarrow S mapping a state and the input alphabet to the next state" should not be taking the input alphabet as input? That would make sense to me, but I've learned about Moore machines only recently. Janmanuel (talk) 20:58, 30 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It is NOT neccesserily wrong to consider the label of the target state as the output of the transition. It depends solely on whether your input signal is synchronous or asynchronous, which means that the output will be synchronous or asynchronous, respectively. Johnplusb (talk) 23:08, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Being a programmer I fail to see in what way this theory help design anything any better? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.165.138.185 (talk) 05:29, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The example machine is supposed to output 1 in the final state ("I"), but outputs 0 in every state. The table is correct. If no disagreement I'll change the diagram. ColinStocks (talk) 16:40, 6 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The article mentions metastability, but not race conditions. Often enough, when debugging a system with asynchronous inputs, the two can get confused. Gah4 (talk) 21:54, 21 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]