Jan M. Rabaey, Anantha Chandrakasan, and Borivoje Nikolic
DIGITAL INTEGRATED CIRCUITS: A Design Perspective, 2/e
Prentice Hall, Pearson Education International,
Softcover pp. 761, plus XXII, $ 45,99
Pretince Hall Inc., Upper Saddle River NJ. 07458, 2003
ISBN 0-13-120764-4
http://www.pearsoneduc.com

In general about the book

Semiconductor industry is moving nowadays towards multigigahertz operation, micro-power consumption and reduction of component dimensions, an era in which digital subsystems are integrated on large complex chips where several circuits of entirely different nature, operating modes, and functionality are residing on the same substrate. Designing of such circuits and systems represents one of the most problematic of all the challenges associated with this new design paradigm. This book gives an overview of the current status, progress and trends in digital integrated circuits (ICs) design, dealing with manufacturing process, design methodology, design synthesis, simulation, and refined characterization of advanced devices to the performance of various circuits. The book is divided into three main parts. Part I (chapters 1-4) provides the necessary foundation, Part II (chapters 5-7) addresses mostly of the circuit perspective of digital circuit design, and Part III (chapters 8-12) presents a more system oriented vision. In addition there are two sections: Problem Solutions, and a comprehensive Index. Within each chapter a subsection References is included. The contents of the book are discussed in the following in some details.

Chapter content

Chapter 1 (Introduction, pp. 3-34) begins with a historical overview of digital circuits design. After that the authors point to trends in digital circuit design, and end with an introduction of quality metrics used to evaluate the quality of a design. Chapter 2 (Manufacturing Process, pp. 35-72) concentrates on CMOS manufacturing and packaging process. Chapter 3 (The Devices, pp. 73-134) presents a comprehensive overview of the operation of the MOSFET transistor as a basic building block of all digital ICs. Different levels of transistor models are involved, starting from simple first-order models, useful for manual analysis, and ending with higher-order SPICE models, employed in conjunction with computer aided simulation. Chapter 4 (The Wire, pp. 135- 175) deals with an in-depth analysis of the role and behavior of the interconnect wire and its accompanying parasitic effects in modern semiconductor industry.

The reader will find Part I of this book useful in that it contains the necessary background for understanding the subsequent chapters.

Chapter 5 (The CMOS Inverter, pp. 179-233) deals with an in-depth analysis of the static CMOS inverter as a nucleus of all digital designs. Chapter 6 (Designing Combinational Logic Gates in CMOS, pp. 235-324) analyzes the behavioral and performance optimization of simple and complex CMOS structures, such as NOR and NAND gates, with regard to area, speed and power consumption. Chapter 7 (Designing Sequential Logic Circuits, pp. 325-373) is concerned with the subject of sequential digital circuits, describing static and dynamic latches and registers, alternative register styles, pipelining and nonstable sequential circuits.

All subjects, discussed in Part II, are treated in-depth. The major merit of this part is that it successfully combines simplicity, physical intuition, and the ability to perform concrete design.

Chapter 8 (Implementation Strategies for Digital ICs, pp. 377-444) presents the complex world of design implementation strategies for digital ICs. Chapter 9 (Coping with Interconnect, pp. 445- 490) deals with how to cope with the impact of interconnect on performance and reliability of digital ICs. Chapter 10 (Timing Issues in Digital Circuits, pp. 491-558) gives details concerning correct operation of digital sequential circuits. The following issues are touched in this chapter: clock skew and jitter, self-timed design, synchronizers and arbiters, PLL and DLL. Chapter 11 (Designing Arithmetic Building Blocks, pp. 559-622) studies the implementation of arithmetic data\-path operators from a performance, area, and power perspective. Several complex arithmetic constituents such as adders, multipliers, and shifters are discussed. Finally, Chapter 12 (Designing Memory and Array Structures, pp. 623-738) discusses in more details the design of semiconductor memories.

In general, Part III gives a thoroughly interesting discussions of advanced system oriented design.

The book includes several useful Design Methodology subsections; IC Layout - Chapter 2, Circuit Simulation- Chapter 3, How to Simulate Complex Logic Circuits and Layout Techniques for Complex Gates- Chapter 6, Characterizing Logic and Sequential Cells and Design Synthesis- Chapter 8, Design Verification- Chapter 10, and Validation and Test of Manufactured Circuits- Chapter 12.

Useful book

The book is timely and clearly gives a broad view of currently hottest topics in the field of digital ICs design. The quality of all the presented material is really very high. This book is suitable for either upper-class undergraduates or first-year graduate students in electrical or computer science engineering. It should make an important reference work for engineers and researchers in the field of digital integrated circuits design. Its content represents the current state-of-the art in the field where innovation and technological advances proceed at an extremely fast pace. I would highly recommend this book to be used as a reference book for course covering area including digital ICs design. Many libraries will be interested in adding this book to their collection.