Electronic Design Automation for IC Implementation, Circuit Design, and Process Technology and Electronic Design Automation for IC System Design, Verification, and Testing

This is the second edition of this book and consists of a two-volume set contained in 1430 pages in 52 chapters. The complexity of today’s designs and tools means that we can’t afford to rerun an EDA tool for each change, so tools must allow incremental runs. Design today is not feed-forward only. Changes made by a back-end tool must be reflected in the database used by front-end tools. This short and instructive chapter on this topic illustrates one of the main benefits of these books. Just as no two tools can work independently today, designers at different stages of implementation must work together. That means understanding, at least at a basic level, the tools used by other members of the design team. At least one set of these volumes belongs in the library of every design team, so that those working at the back end can understand the issues at the front end and vice versa. The second chapter is on logic synthesis, a reasonably mature area. This chapter deals with changes in the past decade with a short update section. It is a good, short tutorial. If the reader needs to explore further, there are 207 references. The high quality of the sample chapters reviewed suggests that the entire two-volume set is equally as good. This is a powerful resource for new designers and will also be valuable for experienced designers who find that they have fallen behind in some parts of the design flow, thanks to lack of time. You are not likely to find this much information in one place anywhere else.