Integrated Circuit Design

There are several excellent textbooks available that treat Integrated Circuit (IC) Design at a level appropriate to final year students, to practising designers or to postgraduates. Some of these advanced texts have an 'engineering' bias, and give a detailed treatment of the technology underlying integrated circuits. Others have a 'computer' science systems' leaning, concentrate on methods of IC design, and do not discuss the underlying technology beyond the barest fundamentals. These textbooks are all expensive, and their use is only justified in an advanced course, where they form one of the major (or even the major) text for the course.
Integrated circuit technology has now reached a stage of maturity where it forms an integral part of most undergraduate courses in Electrical Engineering, and indeed many Computer Science and Physics courses. It is therefore no longer appropriate to leave IC design as merely a 'final year option'. It is neces- sary to introduce the subject at a much earlier stage via a 'primer' course, leaving advanced material to a later course, which only enthusiasts need attend. There is at present no inexpensive text suitable for introducing pre-final year (or younger) undergraduates to IC Design, and it is irresponsible to recommend an advanced text for an introductory course. This book is intended to be a 'first' book of IC design that can stand alone as a text for non-specialists, or can lead to a more advanced course in a subsequent year of study.