Essential Electronic Design Automation (EDA)

• A unique, easy-to-understand introduction to the EDA software tools used to design IC microchips

• Includes all aspects of EDA: business, technical, tool vendor and end user views, IC and EDA industry trends

• Explains (in simple English) the concepts and terminology of IC design issues and the EDA tools that deal with them

• Covers the complete range of EDA tools from electronic system-level through front-end functional design, synthesis, and backend physical design

• Ideal for non-technical readers in sales, marketing, public relations, legal, finance, students, and new entrants to the EDA, semiconductor or related industries

Essential Electronic Design Automation (EDA) demystifies this highly technical industry for anyone with a "need-to-know" about EDA. A friendly, informal introduction to EDA business and technology, clear enough for laypeople yet detailed enough for technical readers. The book also makes an excellent complementary text for cross-disciplinary engineering, business and marketing courses on VLSI Design.

Simply and clearly, veteran industry leader Mark Birnbaum introduces the design problems EDA is intended to solve, the tools that exist to solve them, the designers who use them, and what makes EDA crucial to electronic product and chip design.

• Explains how EDA fits into the electronic product and semiconductor industries

• Examines the EDA industry from both the tool user and EDA software vendor perspectives, including business models, return on investment, and tool evaluation

• Includes electronic system-level tools for defining what ICs will do, front-end functional chip-level tools for design how the IC will behave, and back-end design tools for implementing the IC physical layout

• Discusses EDA industry trends and IC design issues, including deep submicron challenges, intellectual property (IP), and system-on-chip (SoC)

• Includes EDA standards organizations and publications

Industry newcomers will appreciate the book's extensive set of appendices, including primers on electricity, semiconductor manufacturing, computing, and common dimensions, reference sources and a complete glossary with acronym pronunciation.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 3 Ratings

This book is an insult to its readers - 2004-04-08
Reviewer Rating:
I wanted an overview of this big industry that EDA is and this book sounded perfect... I changed my mind not too long after the first couple of pages.
The book is rather short (200 pages) even with HUGE fonts and useless appendixes (like remind the reader that 1 is "one" 10^0, 10 is "ten" 10^1 and so on)

I kept the best for the end, the entire book was written like a kid's book: it's only dialogue!!! (Ms. Newbie (sic) new to an EDA company (Sandbox) talks with other employees).
It's a complete insult to anyone's intelligence.

Stay away, don't waste your money.

Childishly written - somewhat useful content - 2004-05-12
Reviewer Rating:
The book is written mostly as a conversation between a new employee at an EDA company and various people. It's very hard to read, because the entire time you're repeating in your head "Does the author really think people talk this way?" It's distracting. The content is somewhat useful, if simplistic, so the book doesn't rate a "1".

Well written description of this arcane field - 2004-01-08
Reviewer Rating:
Excellent writing and superb Table of Contents - poor index though. Technical and non-technical audience can understand and appreciate this comprehensive review of this important industry.

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