Modern VLSI Design: System-On-Chip Design

A start of the art chip may well have over 10 million or 100 million transistors. How to design such a formidable device? Wolf gives a decent explanation to the student or engineer. You have to be careful here. The term VLSI has been in wide use since the 80s. There are scads of books with "VLSI" in their titles. Yet an unwary reader might end up trolling an obsolete text. With Wolf's book, the material reflects current design standards. One clear difference between his book and a text from, say, 1990, is the relative deprecating of small scale circuit design. To be sure, he does explain various techniques for putting together simple circuits. These are still necessary skills. But much higher level design skills now come into play when dealing with millions of transistors. For instance, scrutinise the chapter on floor planning. The real estate taken up by interconnect is a significant fraction of the chip. Being able to optimise subsystem layout according to various criteria like distributing a clock with minimal skew or distributing sufficient power is vital. Luckily, it is not all rule of thumb. The chapter delves into various methods to aid you. The book should give you a good exposure to VLSI ideas.