The design, development, and testing of microprocessors are practiced by a select group of professionals. The tools of their trade are presumably quite specialized. If a book is to cover these tools and techniques, it needs to be more than, and different from, a collection of technical manuals. This volume is about the tools and techniques for the development and testing of microprocessors, but unfortunately, for the most part, it reads like many ill-conceived technical documents.

The major part of the book (312 pages) discusses various tools and strategies for testing, debugging, simulating, and emulating a system. A relatively small part (39 pages) is devoted to the discussion of RISC and CISC architectural features, although the title and the typesetting of the front cover convey the reverse distribution.

This book does cover several issues, including logic analyzers, monitors, evaluation and development boards, in-circuit emulators, software development tools, built-in development support, BIST and boundary scan, and RISC and CISC microprocessors. It does not contain either problems or an exercise section. The charts and figures are poorly explained or not explained at all. The author provides 22 references to articles and papers, and 23 references to various manuals and data books. The glossary of terms could be useful to a reader who does not know such terms as “bed of nails,” “big endian,” and “little endian,” along with, of course, “assembler,” “bug,” and “library.”

The author claims that this book is for electrical engineers whose responsibility is to realize a working system. I am skeptical about that claim.