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Microelectronic Circuits (Oxford Series in Electrical Engineering)

Microelectronic Circuits (Oxford Series in Electrical Engineering)

List Price: $112.00
Your Price: $112.00
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: one of the best
Review: This text manages to strike a good balance between theory and practice. Device operation is covered in considerable detail, and so are their applications. When deciding on a rating, I'm comparing this book to Analog IC Design by Grey, Meyer, et.al and to Art of Electronics, by Horowitz and Hill. These two books are considered the best in the field, and Sedra/Smith manage to present the material on the par with these two, but give more device operation theory than Horowitz/Hill and somewhat more applications then Grey/Meyer. Personally, I like all 3 books and have them all.

And for people who give bad reviews due to lack of spice integration, typos, and other minor nuances: no book is ever perfect. For example, Grey/Meyer don't cover MOSFET analog switches, while Horowitz/Hill barely go into device operation at all -- they just give rough equations and rule-of-thumb tips. Yet these two books are still considered great. I think Sedra/Smith wrote a book on the par with industry standard texts.
I, for one, was able to skip lectures given by my incoherent prof. and learn solely from this book.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Excellent mid-level book
Review: I found this book to be very easy to read. Once you understand this book, then you can read Gray & Meyer or more advanced books pretty easily. I have never read a real beginners book in Electronics and I was still able to understand it. Nevertheles this book might be a little too advanced for some people who are studying electronics for the first time. However for a mid-level book it's pretty good and people should not judge the book harshly if their professor assigned it for a beginners class-it's not the book's fault but the professor's. I had struggled with many bad mid-level books and so I know this book does a good job compared to many. I originally had the first edition. I had read it so many times that the pages were falling off, so I bought the second edition as well. I skimmed through the latest edition and it's almost the same as the second edition.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Want A grade?
Review: This book is the best book that suite your Analog Electronics undergraduate course.It really worths the money.
My advice:if you are an intermideate analog electronics student get this book and give it atleast 40% of your time but if that will not fit your schedule let me tell you that: Sedra is for the student who has time to read and solve tons of problems! it is intended to transfet the mid-level of electrical experiance from the author to your brain (this is why it will cost you time).
If you are looking for shortcuts to not exceed the C grade you can simply find something like Floyed book and suchs!.
you can use it as a ref. for the basics of the material if you are an advanced student who dont have another ref.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The MOST luminous introductory text written to date.
Review: I have NEVER encountered a text used in an intro or advanced semiconductor course that explains the materials that Sedra and Smith covers with such immense clarity and fluidity. I graduated in 1996 in Electrical Engineering from Iowa State University (ISU) and still admire and DEEPLY love the authors' writing abilities. If I could, I would give them three thumbs up for their achievement. Their elegance of simplicity have launched many of my friends and I into very fruitful careers in the semiconductor field (e.g., with Compac Alpha Development Group, Burr-Brown Corporation, Cadence Design Systems, TI, Analog Devices, and Intel). No other text in the market is quite as luminous.

And who cares if Canadian or European schools are somewhat better than the U.S. That's IRRELEVANT to your learning progress. It PRIMARILY depends on the student and his/her extreme passion to learn. Take a good look at Bob Noyce, Co-Founder of Intel (a son of a Pastor from Iowa), or Hewlett and Packard...et cetera...

It only took me one week to read the textbook. You know the textbook taught you well (instilled circuit intuition) when you are held in HIGHER regard than the PhD in Microwave Engineering or the student who graduated from MIT with a 3.99 GPA, at an interview with Burr-Brown Corporation (Tucson, AZ). Think about them apples for a while.

Disregard all the immature remarks you've read.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: impractical and incomplete
Review: I've been designing circuits for 10 years, and Sedra and Smith was the first electronics text I used. It might be the de facto introductory text in Canadian (and other) universities, but it's not really a good place to start learning.

S&S proposes several completely impractical circuits, like two open-loop cascaded high-gain op-amps. It does not discuss current and voltage references in nearly enough detail and glosses over temperature and supply dependence. The treatment of feedback amplifiers is unnecessarily complex and yet not rigorous enough.

Though the book implies that circuit noise is a problem, it does not discuss how noise is generated in circuit, nor how to calculate its effect. But circuit noise is the most fundamental problem facing designers. The problem is that S&S is dated. It was never strong on circuit theory fundamentals, and now its examples are out-of-date. It offers little or no insight into analog integrated circuits.

This is not the right book to use if you want to learn either circuit theory or practical circuit design. For operational (transconductance) amplifier design, I would recommend Laker and Sansen's book, Design of Analog Integrated Circuits and Systems.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Excellent mid-level book
Review: I found this book to be very easy to read. Once you understand this book, then you can read Gray & Meyer or more advanced books pretty easily. I have never read a real beginners book in Electronics and I was still able to understand it. Nevertheles this book might be a little too advanced for some people who are studying electronics for the first time. However for a mid-level book it's pretty good and people should not judge the book harshly if their professor assigned it for a beginners class-it's not the book's fault but the professor's. I had struggled with many bad mid-level books and so I know this book does a good job compared to many. I originally had the first edition. I had read it so many times that the pages were falling off, so I bought the second edition as well. I skimmed through the latest edition and it's almost the same as the second edition.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Bible of Electronics
Review: This book is all you need: If you want insight into the field of electronics as a hobbyist, technician or a professional engineer, this book is for you. It has complete coverage of basic electronic devices and circuits, analog circuits, and digital circuits. The book can also be used for self-study, but it can be hard to follow straight through since it's really organized more like a reference book than a textbook. If you're thinking about continuing your study of electronics on a more advanced level, this book will give you solid preparation. A word of advice: at some points in the book, the explanations are extremely clear and lucid; at other points the explanations are vague, and always where you least expect it! To get around this, solve as many example problems and exercises as possible, and the "fine points" of the explanations will become crystal clear. As you know, this is true for any engineering discipline, but it seems like the example problems were designed specifically to clarify the occasional "vaguenesses" of the text.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent
Review: The book is Excellent.Although, the Solutions Manual is horrible, buy the book but no the KC's Problems and Solutions.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Useful Book for MicroElectronics
Review: Its a good book with rich examples, quality questions and PSPICE simulations. I would recommend to read this book if you have a knowledge of 'Basic Circuit Analysis'. A good reference book for Electrical and Computer Engineers.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good book for introduction course
Review: This is a good book for introduction course, no matter what others say. I used this book for the first class of Analog circuit many years ago.

If one finds this book difficult, they may not follow the concepts very well. Here are the reasons one may find this book difficult. 1. They just learn by examples, not learn/understand the concepts. Learning is just reading examples before Exam. This won't work after school for sure. (I think that is very poor learning.) 2. They do not have good basic math skills 3. They do not have basic background of semiconductor. This book is for engineers. If you think you will be engineers, this book is for you. This book is not really that difficult If you have semiconductor and good math background. It cannot be bad book. I have many books that are unreadable. This is not one of them. If you found this is very difficult, then you may not want to be engineer. I suggest one finds this book really difficult (after spending time to read) to reconsider the career since one won't want to waste 4 years of time and money to get a degree that does fit the real his/her career. Nowaday, engineer is just as dificult as other careers to find a job and the pay is not such attactive (semiconductor comapanies have been downturn for 4 years now)

I am in semiconductor field. Circuit is not my favor, it is very dry and routine. But the subject is not really that difficult (becuase most theories are not very involved compared to semiconductor field). If you want to be challenged, go for semiconductor physics books or even seminconductor Journals from IEEE, they are much more confusing than circuit books. Some concepts in semiconductor physics can take long time to understand (the math is much more involved than circuit books. One may have to learn the new math from ground up before to study semiconductor physics (e.g Quantum Mechanic). Cicuit math is just basic integration and basic math operation. The circuit math is tedous but not difficult.

Any book has error. This book may have few errors but it is easy to follow. The exercises are challenging. One will spend whole day to solve few questions. Some questions cannot be solved (I was told by a Professor if I recalled correctly). If one spent time to read this book, they will be rewarded. If one found it difficult, then he may need to reconsider if he picked the right field (engineer). It is because this is good and clear book (compared to many books I read. Especially some books wrote by our professors. I was in one of top 5 EE program in US. Some books wrote by our professors were unreadable but he assigned it for his class. Those books should never be published.)

One should know how to get answers by hand not by pspice only. Pspice is just a tool. Pspice cannot design circuits for you. If one knows the theory and know how to do the calculations by hand, he/she can learn pspice in a few days. Even one does not know pspice or spice at all, he knows circuits very well and can do by hand. I guarantee he will have a lot of offers. This is true for any subject, one should always know how to do it by hand. IMO, one should not use Maple, Mathcad unless he knows how to do calculus, matrix etc by hand. Otherwise, he does not learn much. He just learned how to 'pass' the class and it won't help in the interview or career.

If one still find difficult, he/she may not fit engineering field. This book is just the beginning. There are more much difficult books coming later in the engineering courses. If you follow the advice above, you will be much happy in the long run.


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