Microelectronic Circuits [With CDROM]

This book is all you need: If you want insight into the field of electronics as a hobbyist, technician or a professional engineer, this book is for you. It has complete coverage of basic electronic devices and circuits, analog circuits, and digital circuits. The book can also be used for self-study, but it can be hard to follow straight through since it's really organized more like a reference book than a textbook. If you're thinking about continuing your study of electronics on a more advanced level, this book will give you solid preparation. A word of advice: at some points in the book, the explanations are extremely clear and lucid; at other points the explanations are vague, and always where you least expect it! To get around this, solve as many example problems and exercises as possible, and the "fine points" of the explanations will become crystal clear. As you know, this is true for any engineering discipline, but it seems like the example problems were designed specifically to clarify the occasional "vaguenesses" of the text.

This text manages to strike a good balance between theory and practice. Device operation is covered in considerable detail, and so are their applications. When deciding on a rating, I'm comparing this book to Analog IC Design by Grey, Meyer, et.al and to Art of Electronics, by Horowitz and Hill. These two books are considered the best in the field, and Sedra/Smith manage to present the material on the par with these two, but give more device operation theory than Horowitz/Hill and somewhat more applications then Grey/Meyer. Personally, I like all 3 books and have them all. And for people who give bad reviews due to lack of spice integration, typos, and other minor nuances: no book is ever perfect. For example, Grey/Meyer don't cover MOSFET analog switches, while Horowitz/Hill barely go into device operation at all -- they just give rough equations and rule-of-thumb tips. Yet these two books are still considered great. I think Sedra/Smith wrote a book on the par with industry standard texts.I, for one, was able to skip lectures given by my incoherent prof. and learn solely from this book.

Sounds very funny. All the American readers gave this book high evaluation but the only Canadian reader gave a poor evaluation even this book were written by Canadian professors. As for me, a person who had done graduate studies in US but now moved to Canada may also give an evaluation. I think this is REALLY a wonderful book. When I was a student in Arizona, I studied this book and many stuffs had actually helped me during my job interviews both in states and Canada and helped me get multiple offers! Now I've already been a professional engineer and still feel this is a very good reference book. It should be a "Bible" for all the EE students and engineers, I think.

I have NEVER encountered a text used in an intro or advanced semiconductor course that explains the materials that Sedra and Smith covers with such immense clarity and fluidity. I graduated in 1996 in Electrical Engineering from Iowa State University (ISU) and still admire and DEEPLY love the authors' writing abilities. If I could, I would give them three thumbs up for their achievement. Their elegance of simplicity have launched many of my friends and I into very fruitful careers in the semiconductor field (e.g., with Compac Alpha Development Group, Burr-Brown Corporation, Cadence Design Systems, TI, Analog Devices, and Intel). No other text in the market is quite as luminous. And who cares if Canadian or European schools are somewhat better than the U.S. That's IRRELEVANT to your learning progress. It PRIMARILY depends on the student and his/her extreme passion to learn. Take a good look at Bob Noyce, Co-Founder of Intel (a son of a Pastor from Iowa), or Hewlett and Packard...et cetera...It only took me one week to read the textbook. You know the textbook taught you well (instilled circuit intuition) when you are held in HIGHER regard than the PhD in Microwave Engineering or the student who graduated from MIT with a 3.99 GPA, at an interview with Burr-Brown Corporation (Tucson, AZ). Think about them apples for a while.Disregard all the immature remarks you've read.