computer technology

If you're learning this material for the first time, your best bet would be to look elsewhere. I'm taking a course in analog CMOS design after completing an introductory course in electronic devices. I can refer to the Razavi book and actually find it to be quite useful. In fact, it seems better than the book we're using for the class, (CMOS design by Allen)

But when I first bought this book, which was required for the introductory class, it was not helpful at all. The material was too brief, examples too difficult and not explained in detail, problems were too long and onerous so that you completely lose sight of what you're supposed to get a grasp on. An absolute disaster if you're trying to learn this stuff. That's why it sat on my shelf for the whole semester. But for the advanced class, this book seems to pick up right after the introductory course. Definitely not for the novice reader, and it covers the advanced topics that you don't see when you first learn this stuff. Razavi's writing style and presentation is pretty good too.

I have all of the books written by Dr. Razavi, and this is the most recent one. CMOS has been the mainstream on analog design today, and more and more books cover this area. From Roubik Gregorian / Gabor Temes's "Analog MOS Integrated Circuits for Signal Processing" to Phillip Allen / Douglas Holberg's "CMOS Analog Circuit Design", from David Johns / Kenneth Martin's "Analog Integrated Circuit Design" to Roubik Gregorian's "Introduction to CMOS OP-AMPs and Comparators", we can see the rapid development of CMOS analog design techniques. And this book is the most updated one among these books. It covers basic CMOS design techniques as well as some important topics, such as common-mode feedback and current feedback amplifiers. Everything is expressed clearly and easy to understand. However, it does not address some of today's popular topics, such as low-voltage design techniques, constant-Gm and rail-to-rail amplifiers. Hope we can see these in the final edition. The readers can find these topics from Johns/Martin and Gregorian's books. Anyway, I still rate it as a 5-star book.

I've seen one or two other books on analog design, and this is the best. In fact, almost everyone I know (who does analog design) loves the book. Very good information, well explained, good examples. I wish more books were like this.