Advanced Chip Design, Practical Examples in Verilog

Embedded chip design has greatly changed the old game, where a few LSI geniuses created "do it all" ICs and downstream engineers worked (with and around!) the chip's objectives and constraints. Today, the application is key and very specialized, and with FPGA's, even the "end users" are part of the design process! Design at the end? Has to be some kind of oxymoron. The book, in 700 pages, doesn't go into depth in any given area. For example, if you've got race conditions or other problems to contend with in parallel, you'll find a few pages on that topic with encyclopedic - glossary level information but not tutorials or specific code. On the other hand, numerous pipeline sections cover the essence of parallel, piece by piece. This book is outstanding for beginners, as an overview, as an encyclopedia, and certainly a reference to brush up on the latest trends. There is no copyright date as a print on demand, and over the past year I've noticed the author has updated the file at various times, so you're getting the best of that technique if you buy this new. Which brings me to price: at $35 US, the content/value for this text is off the charts. Similar books (there are not many this comprehensive and up to date) run over $200. This is not organized pedagogically for learning, but more as a section by section reference to go as deep as you need to into individual topics. Each one is covered in about half a page to a page and a half, so there are over 1,000 topics covered! My one gripe is that the index is very tiny compared to the content. The TextExtras dot com website is preparing an extensive free searchable page index (you have to prove you bought the book) that's ten times the size of the native version you get with the book, and membership is free. I think either the publisher or author had to support this but am not sure; at least there is a solution for my only gripe! To make up for that, there IS a great little glossary, which authors tend to leave out these days due to wiki-- a mistake in my opinion as it's way more convenient to have it all in one place-- kudos to the author for this thoughtfulness. Highly recommended. Yes, some of the material starts at the basics, but it is ALL detailed and helpful, with more REAL WORLD examples than any other reference I've used. I'm an embedded chip and DSL engineer for robotics and have moved out of auto into medical recently. For those who knock it as not sophisticated enough for advanced designers, well, you have a point as you've got to sacrifice a little depth for breadth in a field that could cover as many books as chess (500 for a master, 1,000 for a grandmaster). What those little dingers are missing is the price-- regardless of your level, at this price, it's a must have even for those of us that do this all day in my opinion. And don't get turned off by the Verilog, I'm a VHDLer, PSpicer etc., and found it just as helpful. It is NOT a "Learn Verilog" book by any means, but at this price, will definitely give you many specific code ideas well worth studying and trying. PS: The author's also fun, using a lot of intuitive examples, like the lines at Safeway for parallel!

There are probably hundreds of books on Chip Design and related areas with various types of readers in mind. The types of readers may fall into following categories - Experts, Technicians, Technical Managers and Non-Specialists, and the book content may range from a very specific area to very general big picture. However, if you want to read only one book that deals with all aspects of chip/system design, written and organized in a way that addresses most types of readers, then this book is it! Just get "Advanced Chip Design with Practical Examples in Verilog" by Kishore Mishra and you are all set! Seriously... This is the first book I came across that pays equal attention to details of "Digital Design" and "System Design." Gone are the days of designing the best chip possible and then let the system designers decide what usage the users would like to apply the system for. Today the chip design has changed - first find usage users would love, define system architecture for it and then design the chip(s). In other words, a designer now is both a system and chip designer. I recommend this book because it deals digital chip design and system design holistically. I like the organization of the book. In the first ten chapters (Section I), Kishore first trains on the language of hardware design (Verilog), followed by the basics of digital design and advanced concepts of digital design. It then describes architecture of ASIC/SoC and finally, ends the section with nuggets of good design practice. In the next ten chapters (Section II), Kishore dedicates the entire section to System related concepts. In this section, he has also included Embedded Systems, ASIC/SoC Testability, Chip development flows and tools, power management and optimization techniques, Bus technologies and I/O protocols. Finally, the icing on the cake includes - further reading resources, a 101 on FPGA, Testbench for Verification, SystemVerilog Assertions (SVA) and he didn't even forget the non-specialist readers by providing a Glossary at the end! I just bought one couple of months back and I strongly recommend it for your personal library. You can use the examples as a guide to your real work, you can browse through the chapters to refresh or learn design concepts, you can use it to teach others, or you can just keep it for those times when you just want to refer to some aspect badly. You will be glad it's there handy for anytime you need it!

Nice book. Quiet a broad coverage . Would have been better if there are some practice questions

After 13 years of coding Verilog, I bought this book after a quick glance at the TOC, I have worked on most IPs described in the book. So my motivations: 1. It might be a good summary of references, and a place to find overlooked constraints. 2. I just want to know how others might have coded it. I didn't end up using this as a reference book in my daily practice, for these reasons: a. A few years of SystemVerilog has changed my design style quiet significantly. Reading this book and the classical RTL in it feels like reading my old codes. b. It's a thick book, but not enough details in each industry standard, many "features" are 2-3 pages of commonly found materials out there. Said that, I should also rate this book by its educational content, here are the pros: 1.The author is not shy in sharing good design practices with the readers. All of his design tips are valid and used in the industry. In start-ups, we sometimes break those guidelines to push for innovation boundaries. 2. It has enough examples to show you how most building blocks are coded. Good for designers who want to learn intuitive HW coding. My conclusion: The book does not teach Verilog, it uses Verilog for some HW design examples. So to lean (System)Verilog, I will recommend a different book from Sutherland. The book can provide some background reading for standard systems, but all of them are evolving rapidly.

A sparse collection of shallow descripted topics with cut&pasted Verilog code scattered here and there very randomly - seriously, i feel sad for the tree that gave up its life and became paper for this book.

The book rides rather on the cookbook approach than on a rigourous "analyze-draw up a truth tablee/state-transition graph ......." procedure. Some coding examples have more of an inspirational value and should be taken with a grain of salt, as they will not work one-to-one. For instance, the decoder_7segdisplay module on page 186 will start the compiler screaming. However, many topics are unique to this publication. Being highly affordable as compared to other publications in this field, I certainly do not regret buying it. For instance, it features a good boots to the ground description on pipelining and asynchronous FIFOs. I would encourage the author to straighten it out with regard to grammar and syntax, and to put some examples on a more systematic and rigorous footing.

It's a comprehensive book for digital design , good insight on protocols.

This is a very useful book from two points. one being that its Verilog and , second, it talks about various system aspects e.g FIFOs. Now i have designed with fifos but the book actually gave the deeper reason why things are done the way they are. I knew what to do but maybe not why. This book told me why. I have not gone through the whole book but what is nice is that it gives an overall view. This for me is good value for money as its half the price of some other books on the same subject. I wish the author had applied some of the information to FPGAS as they are extensively used and I also wished there was a VHDL equivalent as well.

Excellent book, I'm only a hobbyist so I can't comment on the academic/professional uses but fantastic for someone looking to get a foothold in a surprisingly poorly documented online subject.