REFERENCES

Eshraghian, K. and Weste, N., Principles of CMOS VLSI Design (2^nd ed.) (New York: Addison-Wesley).

Wakerly, J., Digital Design: Principles & Practices (2^nd ed.) (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1994).

Overall, we found the tools very difficult to master. Both the quality of the on-line as well as off-line documentation was sparse and very unorganized. Also, we do not believe these tools are on par with what is currently being used in the industry today. While we do not expect the same tools as those used in industry (perhaps due to the high cost), we believe something more current would add value to the class.

In terms of suggestions, we encountered many problems with using the 'getcell' command in Magic. If any item was ever copied, the change in directory structure would create many problems. Also, the debugging features offered with Magic were very vague and made debugging much more cumbersome and time consuming than is usually necessary. Finally, only being able to see the substrate problems at the cif flat level made the debugging very tedious.

If Magic is still to be used in future courses, perhaps some better documentation and debugging tools should be put together.