A long research project conducted by Banerjee, a keen expert in the field, and his graduate students at the University of Illinois has resulted in this book. The motivations for parallel VLSI design are largely projected in the future (the book thus has a strong research flavor); still, the availability of large parallel processors makes the proposed approach relevant in the present also. Parallel computing allows design routines to run much faster, and large memory requirements to be met more easily. These features are particularly important in a field where many problems are large and NP-hard, so that simple and easy parallelizable heuristics are readily adopted, instead of searching for improbable “smart” algorithms.

The book starts with a review of parallel architectures and their programming. Then, all the phases of the VLSI design process are studied, and the parallel strategies for their treatment are deeply analyzed. These phases include placement and floor planning, routing, layout verification, circuit and logic simulation, logic synthesis, and verification.

The book is a useful tool for professionals and a good basic reference for researchers.