Electronic Design Automation Handbook

Way back in 2006, Luciano Lavagno, Lou Scheffer, and Grant Martin, all then at Cadence, edited a two-volume book on EDA. The first volume covered EDA for IC System Design, Verification and Testing. The second volume covered EDA for IC Implementation, Circuit Design, and Process Technology. The first volume was over 500 pages, the second over 600, so it was a comprehensive work. Now, ten years later, they have produced an even-bigger second edition, at a total of over 1400 pages. Luciano Lavagno moved to Politecnico di Torino, Lou Scheffer moved on to Howard Hughes Medical Center (as anyone who was at DAC this year probably knows from seeing his keynote), Grant Martin left Cadence, but he went to Tensilica and so the tractor beam caught him and he is back. And Igor Markov of the University of Michigan joined the editing team to backup Lou, who didn't just leave Cadence, he left the industry.

In case it's not obvious, these guys edited the book. They didn't write all the chapters. Each chapter is written by one or more experts in that particular area of EDA, be it high-level synthesis or circuit simulation. I doubt that there is anyone in the world who is a deep expert on the current state-of-the-art in both of those topics.

The books are big. See below. My sofa for scale.

I am not going to make the obviously false claim that I have read both books cover to cover. I have read a few chapters on areas where my technical knowledge is deep enough. When I was a programmer I wrote VLSI Technology's circuit extractor, and also a system analysis tool called the Design Assistant. I also created VLSI's design database infrastructure. I was the VP Engineering at Ambit Design Systems, a synthesis company, which is how I ended up in Cadence for my first tour of duty. Of course, I have a working knowledge of all of EDA, but it is only in these areas where I feel competent enough to have an opinion. Even then, these books go way deeper than my knowledge and also pull in a lot of results from "the literature". The chapter on logic synthesis has 287 references, for example.

Let me make it more explicit. Here is the section heading list for the chapter on logic synthesis (one of the ones I read most of). If you know anything about the area, you will see how comprehensive it is; if you don't, your eyes will glaze over, because there are words you have no idea about, but you can at least appreciate that it seems detailed:

• Introduction
• Behavioral and RTL synthesis
• Two-level minimization
• Multilevel logic minimization
• Enabling technologies for logic synthesis
• Sequential optimization
• Physical synthesis
• Multivalued logic synthesis
• Summary

Update for the second edition (there were subchapters above, too, but I'll just list these ones since they are new):

• Physical effects
• Boolean optimization and technology mapping
• Low power
• Capacity and speed
• ECO synthesis
• Conclusion (of the update)

Hey, if you want to get your own back on the smug guys who understood every word of that, ask them about something else. Like quadratic placement algorithms, or line-width roughness, or shot noise.

One criticism of the book would be that it is hard to imagine anyone wanting to read more than a few chapters covering his or her area of specialization.The chapters go so deep that a fair amount of background is needed to be able to understand what you are reading. It reminds me of something I read in a book on artificial intelligence once: "You can only learn something if you almost know it already." I don't think anyone "almost knows" all that these two volumes cover, just small sub-domains.

The full table of contents at the chapter level is quite long, so I'll just list it at the section level:

1. Introduction (2 chapters)
2. System-Level Design (9 chapters)
3. Microarchitecture Design (3 chapters)
4. Logic Verification (6 chapters)
5. Test (3 chapters)

1. RTL to GDSII, or Synthesis, Place, and Route (16 chapters)
2. Analog and Mixed-Signal Design (3 chapters)
3. Physical Verification (7 chapters)
4. Technology Computer-Aided Design (3 chapters)

It is hard to imagine a more comprehensive snapshot on what is involved in modern design and implementation of integrated circuits. There is a wealth of information here, and even if any one individual is probably not going to be interested in more than a few chapters, there is an enormous amount of detail in the few chapters that I looked at more deeply.

These are books aimed at university and company libraries, rather than something that any individual engineer would want to rush out and buy. They are available on Amazon ($300 for both volumes). But better is to go to the publisher's website, www.crcpress.com, where they are $159 each or $255 for both volumes. And you can get a 20% discount on those prices using the promo code EEE16 (plus free shipping). With that code, both volumes are about $200 together.

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