Customer Reviews

Application-Specific Integrated Circuits

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a huge book and it covers an enormous area, including FPGAs, VHDL, Verilog, logic synthesis, simulation, testing, and layout. It contains an amazing amount of detail, maybe too much. You can use it like an encyclopedia, but it also makes sense to read. I like the the use of a lot of well drawn figures. I'm tired of the squashed circles in other textbooks that always makes me wonder what other problems are in them. The whole VLSI Series (Mead-Conway and Weste-Eshragian) is very well done. After reading the section on logic synthesis, for the first time it clicked why these software tools do such a bad job sometimes. I had this book for a few months and just discovered the Appendices on Verilog and VHDL. The cross-references to the VHDL keywords and constructs is new, I hadn't seen that before, and a good idea. The VHDL descriptions on boundary-scan testing were useful too. I don't think the algorithms for layout are much use to an ASIC designer, but the descriptions of the Cadence SDF and other company file formats are useful, I can't find these anywhere else. Why is it that the 200-page Kluwer books, which look like they were writen on a typewriter, cost $130 and this one, with 1000 pages, costs $65?

This book is EXTREMELY useful to the practicing engineer as a reference, because of it's comprehensive coverage of ASIC design - all the way from device physics, to HDL coding, to Floorplanning and Routing! It even includes discussions about recent FPGA architectures. For this same reason, the book will be useful to a student learning about ASIC or FPGA design for the first time.

Because the book is so large and comprehensive, it is almost CERTAIN that even very experienced engineers will learn something from it.

The author also has a website with additional material that supplements the book!

Highly recommended!

This book is an ASIC encyclopedia and will be of interest to all engineers, at any level, involved in chip design. There are 17 sections in total and most of the content is up to date. The book starts with an introduction to ASICs and then proceeds to cover all aspects of design, including large sections on FPGA and HDLs, through to layout and routing.

My job requires me to be up to date with the existing as well as emerging technologies related to the ASIC world. This book does a fine job at that. I strongly recommend this book for those who have no prior experience with VHDL.

This book is comprehensive, yes, but the explanations are poor. I find his writing style difficult to follow. The book is poorly edited as well, for example, the second chapter introduces datapath logic cells and then immediately goes into a multipage treatise of multiplier architecture. Interesting information but it seems much out of place given the context. The problems are not very helpful either. Often you will need to search for information outside of the text in order to complete the question. The author obviously knows the subject well, I just don't think he does a very good job of teaching it.

Reviewed in EDN Magazine June 4, 1998, page 26:

"With 17 chapters, two appendices and more than 1000 pages, APPLICATION-SPECIFIC INTEGRATED CIRCUITS by Michael John Sebastion Smith (Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1997, ISBN 0-201-5022-1) is not a casual weekend read. However, its impressive breadth and depth of user-configurable logic coverage leaves little doubt that it will satisfy almost any reader's thirst for knowledge. Smith, a professor at the University of Hawaii (Honolulu), begins with an eight-chapter review of ASIC and programmable-logic technology and device alternatives, CMOS-logic theory, and interconnection options. [...]

For those who are interested in IC design, and want to know more about the design part, business (cost of implementation) and also the technology available in the market. A very good book for engineers as weel as hobbiest.

As an ASIC design engineer, I liked the concept of this book and the breadth of the material covered. This book is broadly divided into two parts - one on FPGA's/PLD's and one on custom ASIC's (the author refers to all of these as ASIC's). The FPGA section covers programmable cells, i/o cells interconnects and design software for some devices of Xilinx, Altera and Actel. I found these sections informative but a bit boring. As you may expect from a nearly 10 year old book, most of the information is outdated. The ASIC's section consists of chapters on HDL's (you are better off reading a separate book on Verilog/VHDL), synthesis, simulation, test, floorplannng, placement and routing. I found these sections much more useful. The writing style is incoherent in many places and very informal throughout. This book is better suited for a reference to a practising engineer than for a college textbook.

Smith's text is an excellent introductory text to those you are curious of the details of ASIC design. This was my first book on ASIC design and I still reference it often. A must read if you are an ASIC designer.

Fantastic book! Complete and very informative.