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Design engineering (DE83)
Design on vacation Semi-Custom IC Design and VLSI P J Hicks (Ed) Peter Peregrinus Ltd, PO Box 8, Southgate House, Stevenage, Herts SGI IHQ, UK (1983) £12.50 218 pp This book comprises a collection of contributions by authoritative academics and industrialists, principally the former, on leading-edge practice in IC design. The book as a whole, is based on the first lEE Vacation School, which had the same title as the book and was held at the University of Edinburgh in July 1983. The usual audience at such vacation schools are a mix of postgraduate students and design engineers who have just moved, or who are about to move, into the subject area of the school. These schools are invaluable to such persons who get the opportunity not only to benefit from the formal contributions of the experts but also to mix with them and to discuss matters informally. The function and readership of the resulting book, however, are less easy to identify. Relatively few references are provided after each chapter and this must detract from the value of the book to research workers, even those new to the subject area. For experienced workers in the areas, the subject treatment will be too superficial. The level of text is primarily appropriate to specialist undergraduate and postgraduate courses in electronic engineering and there is no doubt that it will find some market niche for this purpose. Even so, most such courses will require a number of texts covering the different subject areas somewhat more profoundly. The real question is whether vacation courses of the type which generated this book are suitable vehicles for this purpose. Nevertheless, the status of the authors and the wellpresented authoritative views they express will ensure that it is widely read by teachers of the subjects it contains even if it is not adopted widely as a course text. The book aims to cover all the important areas relevant to its title and largely does so. Commencing with a chapter on 'introduction to silicon
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fabrication' it moves through a 'review of bipolar and MOS technologies' to a chapter on the 'structure of semicustom integrated circuits'. These three chapters largely concern the underlying engineering principles of integrated circuits with the last, biasing the accounts towards the semicustom area. The next chapter, on 'selection of semi-custom techniques, supplier and design route', contrasts the competitive techniques, their practicability and cost-effectiveness for different applications. There then follows chapters on 'circuit design techniques', 'logic design with emphasis on ASM method', 'the programmable logic array: implementation and methodology', and 'PLA and ROM based design', which are concerned with detailed implementation of digital systems. The accounts presented in these chapters are not restricted to silicon implementation but, of course, the latter is the book's intent. There follows very short chapters on 'CAD and design implementation' and 'a review of simulation techniques', which do little more than set the scene. These are followed by a short but useful chapter on 'partitioning, placement and automated layout', which gives a clear overall view of the topic. A slightly longer chapter, 'design for testability' again gives a clear overview of this topic. The penultimate chapter, 'silicon compilers and VLSI', indicates what is currently achievable but is really rather too cursory. The last chapter, 'practical aspects of semicustom design' tends to be very general apart from a reference to 'graphics controller' case study.
K G Nichols
Experience in design Design Engineering (DES83) B J Davies (Ed) IFS (Publications) Ltd, 35-39 High Street, Kempston, Bedford, UK and North-Holland (1983) 388 A4 pp £43 This volume contains the papers
presented to the Sixth Annual Design Conference held in Bedford in October 1983. Its 1983 publication date and lack of reports on the discussion indicates that it is the preprint used at the conference. The design engineering title is accurate, it is primarily about design, but naturally includes much CAD, CAM and CAE. It has the inevitable large helping of papers drawing attention to the marvellous programs or advice available from authors' firms but this is compensated for by useful papers describing experience at various firms where CAD or CAM or CAE has been applied. In some cases this has been over a few years and in others more gradually, over decades. Perhaps the most dramatic installation described is that at Austin Rover where it is claimed that over £12 000 000 had been spent on CAE facilities in the last four years resulting in 227 VDUs in use. This has almost eliminated the drawing board in the design office and has increased productivity threefold. The design information is still taken from the approved clay model but it is made symmetrical before being entered into the master database. All subsequent desig_nand manufacturing information is elaborated from and to this database. The introduction of CADCAM to Ferranti Avionics is similarly described. In both cases this change has been going on for over twenty years, with a more uniform growth in the latter case and a more dramatic growth in the last few years for the former. There are several papers on what to look out for when selecting a CAD system, some less biased than others. The approach of automated assembly has led to work on how products should be designed to facilitate assembly and this topic is dealt with in several papers. Most authors note that their approach improves manual assembly. This publicationoffers something for many different interests at all levels of experience, ranging as it does from simple papers for beginners to descriptions of complex installations. Although expensive, your library could usefully get a copy.
W H P Leslie
computer-aided design
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fabrication' it moves through a 'review of bipolar and MOS technologies' to a chapter on the 'structure of semicustom integrated circuits'. These three chapters largely concern the underlying engineering principles of integrated circuits with the last, biasing the accounts towards the semicustom area. The next chapter, on 'selection of semi-custom techniques, supplier and design route', contrasts the competitive techniques, their practicability and cost-effectiveness for different applications. There then follows chapters on 'circuit design techniques', 'logic design with emphasis on ASM method', 'the programmable logic array: implementation and methodology', and 'PLA and ROM based design', which are concerned with detailed implementation of digital systems. The accounts presented in these chapters are not restricted to silicon implementation but, of course, the latter is the book's intent. There follows very short chapters on 'CAD and design implementation' and 'a review of simulation techniques', which do little more than set the scene. These are followed by a short but useful chapter on 'partitioning, placement and automated layout', which gives a clear overall view of the topic. A slightly longer chapter, 'design for testability' again gives a clear overview of this topic. The penultimate chapter, 'silicon compilers and VLSI', indicates what is currently achievable but is really rather too cursory. The last chapter, 'practical aspects of semicustom design' tends to be very general apart from a reference to 'graphics controller' case study.
K G Nichols
Experience in design Design Engineering (DES83) B J Davies (Ed) IFS (Publications) Ltd, 35-39 High Street, Kempston, Bedford, UK and North-Holland (1983) 388 A4 pp £43 This volume contains the papers
presented to the Sixth Annual Design Conference held in Bedford in October 1983. Its 1983 publication date and lack of reports on the discussion indicates that it is the preprint used at the conference. The design engineering title is accurate, it is primarily about design, but naturally includes much CAD, CAM and CAE. It has the inevitable large helping of papers drawing attention to the marvellous programs or advice available from authors' firms but this is compensated for by useful papers describing experience at various firms where CAD or CAM or CAE has been applied. In some cases this has been over a few years and in others more gradually, over decades. Perhaps the most dramatic installation described is that at Austin Rover where it is claimed that over £12 000 000 had been spent on CAE facilities in the last four years resulting in 227 VDUs in use. This has almost eliminated the drawing board in the design office and has increased productivity threefold. The design information is still taken from the approved clay model but it is made symmetrical before being entered into the master database. All subsequent desig_nand manufacturing information is elaborated from and to this database. The introduction of CADCAM to Ferranti Avionics is similarly described. In both cases this change has been going on for over twenty years, with a more uniform growth in the latter case and a more dramatic growth in the last few years for the former. There are several papers on what to look out for when selecting a CAD system, some less biased than others. The approach of automated assembly has led to work on how products should be designed to facilitate assembly and this topic is dealt with in several papers. Most authors note that their approach improves manual assembly. This publicationoffers something for many different interests at all levels of experience, ranging as it does from simple papers for beginners to descriptions of complex installations. Although expensive, your library could usefully get a copy.
W H P Leslie
computer-aided design