Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
This book attracts attention with its up-to-date and catchy chapter titles. There are also alternative titles which in fact promise slightly more than can be achieved in a non-mathematical presentation. They are, however, useful in providing suitable starting points for inquiry. There are many well presented descriptions, within each of these chapters, of the journey that microelectronics has taken from the past to present day as it has developed over a hundred years or more. Extended discussions of a whole variety of topics related to microelectronics and modern computing are presented to meet the needs of readers wanting to understand where we are today. For those with little or no previous knowledge of the areas covered in this book the journey described might be rather rapid for comprehension or full appreciation of the major concepts of significance. However, for those who have some good practical or previous theoretical experience this journey provides a first-class opportunity to review the relevance of particular principles in the company of an author who has a clear understanding of his chosen topics. At the back of the book both a glossary and index are provided. The small glossary has only a very short explanation of a number of terms and acronyms. These tend to be so brief that they could easily have been included in the main text. A more comprehensive index alone could then provide the same amount of help to the reader by pointing to the main text references. One small problem in a couple of chapters arises out of the use of the phrase `current flowing'. This is a dangerous tautology for readers requiring the help of this book. In their anticipation and appreciation of future developments in microelectronics readers might benefit from clear identification of a current with charges flowing rather than being influenced to think of `current' as a physical attribute having an independent existence separate from charge. The suggestions given for further reading are carefully cross-referenced to each of Richard Turton's chapters, and anyone reading the whole of his book is sure of some stimulus towards following up some of the ideas in microelectronics and is therefore likely to find this inclusion of real value. The chapters that touch on possible developments in optical computing, including the one headed `Making light work', raise heavy thoughts on the properties of light which can appear confused and seem inconsistent. Specifically the ideas of the non-interference of different signals and of Fourier transforms do not necessarily come easily to students at school level who have had to struggle with the ideas of interference theory. The accessibility of the material in this book is likely to be greatest for those who already have a good school/university interface appreciation of electronics and physics. General readers may be happy to find little mathematics in this book but for those with no mathematics a full appreciation of much of the significance of the arguments contained in it may be lost since the amount of background knowledge assumed is actually quite considerable. To summarize, a read of this text would be very valuable for a student looking for a review of the development path of microelectronics. This is one that provides a broad horizon for their thoughts and prepares them for a deeper appreciation of future developments in microelectronics and its possible applications.
Andrew Barclay (Mon,) studied this question.