This book was written to arm engineers qualified and knowledgeable in the area of VLSI circuits with the essential knowledge they need to get into this exciting field and to help those already in it achieve a higher level of proficiency. Few people truly understand how a large chip is developed, but an understanding of the whole process is necessary to appreciate the importance of each part of it and to understand the process from concept to silicon. It will teach readers how to become better engineers through a practical approach of diagnosing and attacking real-world problems.

Liming Xiu is a Design Engineer and a Senior Member of Technical Staff (SMTS) at Texas Instruments, Inc. His interests include digital and mixed-signal integrated circuit design and VLSI physical design. He has worked on various mixed-signal devices, including video decoders, 3-D graphics controllers, and HDTV decoders, as physical design lead. He is also a Phase Lock Loop (PLL) expert. He is the inventor of "Flying-Adder" frequency and phase synthesis architecture, which has been used in many commercial products. He has eleven granted or pending U.S. patents. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and the general chair of the IEEE Circuit and Systems Society, Dallas Chapter.