The book is intended for a wide audience. It may be used in an undergraduate or graduate course. It is also intended for those in industry who are involved with ASICs. Another function of this book is an "ASIC Encyclopedia," and therefore I have kept the background material needed to a minimum. The book makes extensive use of industrial tools and examples.

The examples in Chapters 2 and 3 use tools and libraries from MicroSim (PSpice), Meta Software (HSPICE), Compass Design Automation (standard-cell and gate-array libraries), and Tanner Research (L-Edit). The programmable ASIC design examples in Chapter 4-8 use tools from Compass, Synopsys, Actel, Altera, and Xilinx. The examples in Chapter 9 (covering low-level design entry) used tools from Exemplar, MINC, AMD, UC Berkeley, Compass, Capilano, Mentor Graphics Corporation, and Cadence Design Systems. The VHDL examples in Chapter 10 (VHDL) were checked using QuickVHDL from Mentor, VSystem Plus from Model Technology, and Scout from Compass. The Verilog examples in Chapter 11 were checked using Verilog-XL from Cadence, VSystem Plus, and VeriWell from Wellspring Solutions. The logic synthesis examples in Chapter 12 were checked with the ASIC Synthesizer product family from Compass and tools from Mentor, Synopsys, and UC Berkeley. The simulation examples in Chapter 13 were checked with QuickVHDL, V-System/Plus, PSpice, Verilog-XL, DesignWorks from Capilano Computing, CompassSim, QSim, MixSim, and HSPICE. The test examples in Chapter 14 were checked using test software from Compass, Cadence, Mentor, Synopsys and Capilano's DesignWorks. The physical design examples in Chapters 15-17 were generated and tested using Preview, Gate Ensemble, and Cell Ensemble (Cadence) as well as ChipPlanner, ChipCompiler, and PathFinder (Compass). All these tools are installed at the University of Hawaii.