【转】Is Razavi's analog textbook too simple ?

teradyne

Does anybody think Razavi's analog textbook
(design of analog cmos integrated circuist) is too simple ?

I heard some comments to this book,these comments think this book is too simple to be worth reading.

How about your thought ?

teradyne

If your starting ur analog design dont read Razavi first. Its a real good book but not for begineers. Maybe you can read Baker and Lee and then if you read Razavi you will appreciate the book really well

teradyne

Yes, razavi's book provides good understanding of analog design. It doesnot mean it is simple. it is must read book

teradyne

yes,ofcourse it is really good.here u r having the solutions for each chapters.study one chapter.try to solve it..else go through the solutions then again try..

teradyne

The book is easy to read,but not easy to understand completely.
I have read the book again and again.I can find more new knowledge every time.

teradyne

Razavi's approach reminds me of the saying attributed to Einstien:
"Everything should be made as simple as possible..but not any simpler"

Razavi's approach indicates that he has a mastery of the subject matter.
He understands it well enough to be able to present difficult material in a
(deceptively?) simple manner. 'Deceptive' in a good sense though.

I personally like the book a lot and read it whenever I can get some time.

Trying out some of the many many ideas mentioned in his book is what I would
really like to do though. I tried one of them and had only limited luck.
Has anyone else had better luck with trying some of Razavi's circuit ideas ?

teradyne

  used Gray's book for a class and in my opinion it was a bit hard to understand. I'm going to try Razavi's book next to try to get some things down, then go back to Gray's book.

that is really a good book to give you a feeling of analog ic design
Razavi's analog textbook is a perfect book, and it is worthing to read. The simple is that Razavi's analysis is clean about analog circuit.
;P Ravazi's book provide detailed analysis of circuits.
Baker's book is like a tutorial, and better for beginners.
;P Is the Razavi's book on the forum? Can someone give me the book title to search?

Thanks
;PRazaviz book is easy to read and clear in idea expressing. This is the first analog ic book I read. I think it is a good reference for both beginner and experience. Later, I read "Analysis and Design of Analog Integrated Circuits" by Grey. It is also a good book. But for beginner, they may be lost in the large amount of the arithmetic deriving.

teradyne

Razavi's book is perfect.but it's not good enough to design a real circuit
I think analog designer should at least three bible
1. razavi
2. Martin
3. Allen
it is a good conceptual book for analog design trainers
i just read razavi books recently, i think it really give a good overview and concept about analog ic design.
It's really a good reference for you doing research in analog ic design. Actually, i think that book help me a lot.

I think that's the best book for understanding the whole concept of "Analog Design". Yes I agree with those who said Gray's book is fantastic. but these two books are not really in a same category. Gray book is about electronics in general : BJTs, FETs, opamp nonlinear applications and so on, but Razavi's book is just about CMOS ICs. it's not for beginners and I should say it's somehow a graduate book. However, it's not so practical. It's theory and theory and circuit concepts.
and about its problems. they are really innovative. you can't find any problems like that in any other analog book even in Gray's.
Regards,
EZT
It is a very useful book, also it doesn't contain a lot of tedious mathematical proofs. This book concentrate on understanding physically.

It might not be very simple, but it is very powerful.
The mathematical models mentioned co-op with the physics the author was explaining
yes , razivi's book is a very good one , but if you want to do practice ic design, you'd better read more books,like gray's and allen's. These books are an analog designer must read.
I read the Razavi's book once and I found it very useful. It is different from Gray's book (I find this book more complete) because this book tries cmos and bipolar concepts at the same time. I work with bicmos processes and for me to have this concepts together is very important.
But Razavi's is always a good book and I don't agree to consider it a beginner's book.
razavi, allen and gray's are all not for beginners, you can't throw either of them after you read it. They are complementary each other.
This book is a good book. I have read it. It is very useful for an analog designer. More circuit can be analysis detail. Most of people can read it easily.

teradyne

in california, most professsors get funds from intel and those types of companies to do research in cmos and other things because it's cheaper to pay a professor and let his students do the research than have a research team at your company whose workers all make huge salaries. so in california everyone wants to do everything in cmos ...
Currently, I am designing a real-life product in a state-of-the-art CMOS process for a large company. Part of the design is an extremely fast 2-stage Op-Amp and I have read only Razavi of the three main books mentioned here.
In my opinion, it is enough. Basic conceptual understanding of things like cascodes, regulated cascodes (gain-boost), common-mode feedback and a great deal of small-signal analysis are very useful.
I don't actually look into the book nowadays, because I know output resistances and one basic saturation formula by heart:
Id = 1/2 * mu * cox * W/L * (Vgs-Vth)^2
The other main issues will turn out to be process variations and parasitics. There are only two things required for an understanding of those:
1. Basic understanding of statistics.
2. Mastery of having pole-zero diagrams in your head.
These two things are very rare and depend for 80% on talent. If you have got the talent, I think no book will significantly improve your productive knowledge of CMOS design better than Razavi's.

Hey,
In my opinion those think in that way (too simple to be worth reading) that they love to see simple things in a complicated way. My personal view is that if something can be made understood in simple way why should we go for complicacy? Just to WONDER!.....
No, I like it very much and I don't think I loose much time and get less worth things.
sankudey
My opinion: the most great thing w/ Dr. Razavi's book is that it analyzes the ckts interms of intuition, instead of math. On the other hand, Dr. Gray and Meyer' book is kinda of academy styled. I guess that if you can read through even one book from tons and understand completely every piece of it, you can feel comfortble w/ most of ckts.
But dont forget the MOST important thing: you have to do some real design with CAD!

I think these is the best books about CMOS analog IC design:
1. CMOS Analog Circuit Design (Allen,Holberg)
I upload full version of this book (2nd edition, scan) - h**p://www.edaboard.com/ftopic160119.html
2. Design of Analog CMOS Inegrated Circuits (Razavi)
3. Analog Integrated Circuits Design (Johns,Martin)
4. Microelectronic circuits (Sedra,Smith)
5. CMOS Circuit Design Layout and Simulation (Baker,Li,Boyce)
6. Analysis and Design of Analog Integrated Circuits (Gray,Hurst)
The sentence from matchasm remember me that the most productive work which I have done is to find and combine circuit topologies for an application problem. What I needed was the device physics and a conceptional abstraction of the circuit topology. Then I combine the components together. I rarely found later exact the same solution by others. The textbooks of Razavi are missing the analysis part and therefore do not train to understand and recombine basic subblocks. It trains to search for a nearly matching circuit, copy them and have problems because nearly is not the work of an engineer.

teradyne

Hi,
I've read this book and found it be be well laid out (in parts). However, I found alot of my time was spent reading chapters over and over again (just to let it all sink in).
I have benefited much more form practical learning. A couple of months ago I did a training course with IC Mask Design. These guys specialise in Analog and Advanced Analog training courses. I learned much more in this 4 day lecture and lab course than I have from any of book.....and the learning process is alot quicker aswell.
I'd highly recommend checking these guys out if yor looking to upskill:!:

Hi,
I feel Razavi's book is atleast not for the beginners. But if you have some basic background in Analog domain then the book can be very handy.
Things are arranged quite nicely in the book.
Apart from it u can also start with Allen Hollberg
Thanks
Shaikh Sarfraz

As mentioned before, it's good for beginners since you have the solution manual. Practice the problems out and fully understand them. Use cross references (Allen, Meyer, etc.) if you have trouble understanding specific sections
I read his book firstly.It is real quite a good book for beginner and i have read it for some times. Now i regard it as a referent book. I am reading Allen's book now.Both of the two books are very good.

Although the choice of text books depends more on the user's preference and level of understanding but i am really surprised to see this comment . Complexity never ensures quality ...and as far as Razavi's text are concerned his all manuscript are really lucid ...I always keep them for Quick reference with me ..Other analog book which i preferred during course study were Allen Holberg , Baker-Lee-Boyce .
Hollberg is another book which is written in very simple language ....Atleast this is what i felt ..
Added after 52 seconds:
Although the choice of text books depends more on the user's preference and level of understanding but i am really surprised to see this comment . Complexity never ensures quality ...and as far as Razavi's text are concerned his all manuscript are really lucid ...I always keep them for Quick reference with me ..Other analog book which i preferred during course study were Allen Holberg , Baker-Lee-Boyce .
Hollberg is another book which is written in very simple language ....Atleast this is what i felt ..
Added after 24 minutes:
Although the choice of text books depends more on the user's preference and level of understanding but i am really surprised to see this comment . Complexity never ensures quality ...and as far as Razavi's text are concerned his all manuscript are really lucid ...I always keep them for Quick reference with me ..Other analog book which i preferred during course study were Allen Holberg , Baker-Lee-Boyce .
Hollberg is another book which is written in very simple language ....Atleast this is what i felt ..