"With 17 chapters, two appendices and more than 1000 pages, APPLICATION-SPECIFIC INTEGRATED CIRCUITS by Michael John Sebastion Smith (Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1997, ISBN 0-201-5022-1) is not a casual weekend read. However, its impressive breadth and depth of user-configurable logic coverage leaves little doubt that it will satisfy almost any reader's thirst for knowledge. Smith, a professor at the University of Hawaii (Honolulu), begins with an eight-chapter review of ASIC and programmable-logic technology and device alternatives, CMOS-logic theory, and interconnection options. The next six chapters cover logical-design techniques, beginning with schematics and expanding to simple and then more complex hardware description languages. Smith discusses logic simulation, synthesis, and test coverage. He then turns his attention to mapping design netlists to physical-device architectures, including partitioning, placement, routing, and estimating performance and power consumption."