53 ■IEEE CIRCUITS & DEVICES MAGAZINE ■ MAY/JUNE 2005

added using material in Chapters 6–10,and 14, where IDDQ testing, functionaltesting, delay fault testing, CMOS test-ing, fault diagnosis, and memory testingare reported. While synthesis for testa-bility and testing at register-transfer,behavior and system-level argumentscan be included by using Chapters 13,15, and 16, where these issues are dis-cussed in depth.

The introduction (Chapter 1) and thechapter dealing with memory testing(Chapter 14) are invited contributionswritten by Prof. A. van de Goor.

Giuseppe Di Cataldo

APPLIED QUANTUM MECHANICSBy A.F.J. Levi, Cambridge UniversityPress, 2003.

There are many books on quantummechanics. Most of these books are writ-ten for physics majors following tradi-tional approaches emphasizing basictheories and historical development.This book is devoted to the applicationof quantum mechanics.

There are ten chapters in the book.Chapter 1 is a review of classical con-cepts, but does not include the compari-son of atomic linear chain to electrictransmission lines and filters and thebasic concept of traveling waves andwave vectors in this chapter.Schrödinger’s wave equation is intro-duced in Chapter 2, including its appli-cation to periodic tables and crystalstructures. Chapter 3 develops the moresystematic use of the one-dimensionalSchrödinger equation to describe a par-ticle in simple potentials and particletunneling. Chapter 4 is concerned withelectron scattering from a one dimen-sional potential including resonant elec-tron tunneling and the Kronig-Penneymodel of a periodic crystal potential.Chapter 5 introduces the concept ofuncertainty principles and the density ofstates. Chapter 6 covers harmonic oscil-lators using the creation and annihila-tion operators. Chapter 7 deals withFermion and Boson distribution func-tions. Chapter 8 introduces time-depen-dent perturbation theory and applies itto impurity scattering in semiconduc-tors. The semiconductor laser diode is

covered in Chapter 9. Chapter 10 dis-cusses the time-independent perturba-tion theory.

The book covers many examples anduses many MATLAB programs includedin an attached CD ROM. According to thedescription on the Cambridge UniversityPress Web site, this book has 12 chapters,with Chapter 11 on angular momentumand the hydrogen atom and chapter 12on additional concepts. These two extrachapters were added after earlier copiesof the book had been printed. It is cer-tainly good to include more descriptionon basic concepts.

The presentation of this book followsbasically the traditional approach for ele-mentary quantum mechanics books. Forexample, in the treatment on atomicchains in Chapter 1, it refers to the char-acteristics of electrical transmission lineand filter structures instead of using allmechanical models. The wave vector qwas introduced on p. 11. But there is notmuch explanation on the basic concept ofq, which is important for practical appli-cations such as holography and crystalmomentum. The book did not adopt theuse of Dirac’s bra and ket notation. Thebook has many examples with solutionsattached at the end of every chapter. Thematerial should be very helpful to read-ers, especially to those using the book forself-study. The book has six appendiceson physical constants and simple mathe-matical equations, together with anindex, at the end of the book, though itdoes not include a list of references.

The book devotes much attention tosemiconductors. Chapter 9, for example,deals with semiconductor lasers. Butmost of the treatment follows the tradi-tional approach of dealing with mechan-ical models. In Chapter 10, for example,the treatment on perturbation Wcouldbe applied to problems in nonlinearoptics in terms electric fields instead ofmechanical spacing x. It would also begood to introduce the concept of inter-action Hamiltonian for stimulated scat-tering processes.

My overall impression of this book isthat it will be a good reference for stu-dents and scientists working in the areasrelated to quantum electronic and opti-cal devices.

ANALOG VLSI DESIGNAUTOMATION

By Sina Balkir, Gunhan Dundar, andSelcuk Ogrenci, CRC Press, 2003.

The integrated circuit market haswitnessed over the last few years explo-sive growth in the digital VLSI domain,which contrasts with the undefinedgeneral methodology for analog designautomation and much less penetrationof analog CAD tools into the market.The emerging and pressing demands ofsystem-on-chip (SOC) design withboth analog and digital circuitries fab-ricated on the same wafer base, anddesign IP reuse for a short turnaroundtime have marked an inevitable era ofsemiconductor history when a fullyintegrated design flow will allow thecomplex analog design to be automat-ed to a great extent.

In Analog VLSI Design Automation,which has been recently added to theCRC Press VLSI Circuits Series, theauthors describe an analog VLSI designautomation flow (ADA), where eachdesign tool has its predefined objectives,inputs and outputs, and interfaces toother tools within the flow. It has beenapplied to each design step from top-level functional and performance speci-fications to physical mask layouts.Although fully automated, user inter-vention at any point of the flow and sep-arate use of any of the tools are alsopossible. Three design cases are present-ed throughout the book to illustrate theautomation approach, namely switch-capacitor filters for sampled-data systemcases, A/D converters for typical mixed-signal system cases, and analog neuralnetworks as an example of continuous-time analog arithmetic systems.

Following the introductory overviewin Chapter 1, which also poses questionsabout the whole design cycle, the designautomation flow in this book has beendeveloped and presented at three levels:system, circuit, and layout.

At the system level, as presented inChapter 2, with behavioral specificationstaken as input, the ADA system providesa selected topology for the analog circuitby closely interacting with the libraryand performance estimator. This is gen-erally two step-optimization runs; one

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■ 54 IEEE CIRCUITS & DEVICES MAGAZINE ■ MAY/JUNE 2005

based on an ideal component in thelibrary to determine an initial guess ofthe performances, and then, with thereplacing macromodels where sec-ondary effects are also accounted, thepower and area figures are taken fromthe estimator and optimized in the costfunction of a second optimization run.This high-level synthesis scenario hasbeen applied to all three design cases tovalidate the system-level methodology.

Chapter 3 concerns circuit-level syn-thesis, which takes in the block perfor-mance specifications and outputs thetransistor sizing and biasing informa-tion of a particular circuit topology.With a combination of the strengths ofsimulated annealing and evolutionarystrategy, the advantages of speed andindependence of starting point havebeen gained by employing fast neuralmodels and limiting the simulations tothe dc domain only. The preparatoryeffort of using this approach includesthe generation of user-defined equa-tions, training the neural network forperformance models, and the incorpora-tion of mismatches. The advantage ofspeed is very important in the automat-ed synthesis environment as it allowsthe interaction with automatic topologyselection residing at a higher level andphysical layout generation tool residingat a lower level.

The layout-level synthesis tooldescribed in Chapter 4 is a layout gener-ator that carries out three functions:partitioning, placement, and routing(PPR) at the lowest level of design hier-archy. As a contribution to this exten-sively studied field, this chapter hasreviewed and commented on virtuallyall of the important work that have beenpreviously done. With the previous fieldachievement extracted from the knowntools, the layout generator ALGv2 is awell-balanced combination of strengths

in many aspects, e.g., the general PPRparadigm following device generationsbeing a development along the line ofALDA systems, the simulated annealing-based placement tool being an enhance-ment from the KOAN/ANAGRAM tools,and performance-driven considerationbeing rooted from the early tools suchas MIGHTY, etc.

Chapter 5 presents comprehensivecase studies for the three main designcases with the results generated fromthe major design operations listed.Chapter 6 draws conclusions on thefuture directions for this dynamicallychanged field.

With an excellent summary of thestate-of-the-art in the critical areas ofanalog VLSI design automation, thisbook will be of interest to academicresearchers and professionals in semi-conductor and electronic designautomation (EDA) industries. The ref-erenced background literatures willserve as exploratory guidances towardsthe latest advances of analog VLSIdesign automation.

Patrick Wu

A USER’S GUIDETO VACUUM TECHNOLOGY

By John F. O’Hanlon, John Wiley &Sons, 2003.

John F. O’Hanlon’s A User’s Guide toVacuum Technology is an excellenthandbook for engineers, scientists, oranybody who uses vacuum systems on aregular basis. It is obvious from the titleof the book that the author has put him-self into the mind of the user and provid-ed in-depth information that wouldallow understanding of the technology asit is used. This book is a comprehensiveguide to vacuum technology, but not anintroductory book. It is, however, a vital

textbook for all those technicians, engi-neers, and researchers who are in micro-electronics, optics and thin film coating,and who have some familiarity with vac-uum systems but must know more.

The subject of vacuum is discussed infive main sections: its basis, measure-ment, production, materials, and sys-tems. The book concludes with goodappendices that contain a lot of informa-tion very useful to any vacuum user.

The first section is “Its Basis,” whichgives detailed discussion of manyaspects of basic knowledge of vacuumtechnology. It covers suitable depth(including the math) the kinetic theoryof gases, gas flow, outgassing, etc.

The “Measurement” section is trulyuseful. It covers every technique that isneeded to measure pressure, gas flow,and pumping speed from the principleof the measurement to hardware setup.The discussion about residual gas ana-lyzer is particularly useful.

“Production” mainly discusses vari-ous vacuum pumps, covering the mostcommonly used pumps in industry andlaboratories, such as mechanical pumps,turbomolecular pumps, diffusion pumps,getter and ion pumps, and cryogenics.

The “Materials” emphasizes how thechoice of materials and componentsinfluences the ultimate pressure. If onlythis were understood by all vacuumusers. It concludes with an interestingchapter on vacuum lubrication, whichgives references to a variety of liquid,grease, and dry lubricants.

The “Systems” section describes vari-ous vacuum systems with a focus on “drypumping systems” and a few new entriesto this third edition, such as interestingdiscussions of unltraclean vacuum sys-tems and multichamber systems.

Yan Feng, Ph.D.InPhenix, Inc.

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