Metal oxide silicon field effect transistors (MOSFETs) form the basic circuit element of many modern integrated circuits, and designing a large array of such elements requires the use of an automatic design aid such as SPICE. In its most elementary form, SPICE is used by students and engineers to design ordinary analog devices, such as amplifiers, with a guarantee that the devices will actually work when built.

With large-scale digital integration, however, designers are no longer able to use discrete components such as resistors, capacitors, and transistors off the shelf. These components must be realized as structures in deposited silicon or similar materials. To achieve this, SPICE has been extended to allow physical device parameters, such as channel length and width, to be used as inputs to models, which then use basic physics to compute the ultimate performance.

This book details the evolution of these versions of SPICE. It describes their use and the way in which they can be used to tailor an initial configuration to give a good account of the actual device when constructed. SPICE levels 1 through 3, BSIM, BSIM2, and BSIM3, as well as HSPICE level 28 and MOS Model 9, are described in detail, with excellent illustrations. In all cases, comparisons with reality are shown. Each chapter ends with an extensive and up-to-date bibliography. Appendices give equations and SPICE parameters, which would have been better presented on a disk, if one had been included with the book.

Readers will need to have had a background course in elementary physical or engineering theory, but the book is otherwise self-contained. I would use it as a text for an advanced undergraduate course in transistor design or as a reference for research in integrated circuits.