He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University and his M.Eng. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT. Before attending Stanford, he worked at Intel as a logic and circuit designer on the Itanium and Pentium II processors. Since then, he has consulted at Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, Evans & Sutherland, and other design companies. David's passions include teaching, building chips, and exploring the outdoors. When he is not at work, he can usually be found hiking, mountaineering, or rock climbing. He particularly enjoys hiking with his son, Abraham, who was born at the start of this book project. David holds about a dozen patents and is the author of three other textbooks on chip design, as well as two guidebooks to the Southern California mountains.