The summer school on VLSf GAD Tools and Applications was held from July 21 through August 1, 1986 at Beatenberg in the beautiful Bernese Oberland in Switzerland. The meeting was given under the auspices of IFIP WG 10. 6 VLSI, and it was sponsored by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Switzerland. Eighty-one professionals were invited to participate in the summer school, including 18 lecturers. The 81 participants came from the following countries: Australia (1), Denmark (1), Federal Republic of Germany (12), France (3), Italy (4), Norway (1), South Korea (1), Sweden (5), United Kingdom (1), United States of America (13), and Switzerland (39). Our goal in the planning for the summer school was to introduce the audience into the realities of CAD tools and their applications to VLSI design. This book contains articles by all 18 invited speakers that lectured at the summer school. The reader should realize that it was not intended to publish a textbook. However, the chapters in this book are more or less self-contained treatments of the particular subjects. Chapters 1 and 2 give a broad introduction to VLSI Design. Simulation tools and their algorithmic foundations are treated in Chapters 3 to 5 and 17. Chapters 6 to 9 provide an excellent treatment of modern layout tools. The use of CAD tools and trends in the design of 32-bit microprocessors are the topics of Chapters 10 through 16. Important aspects in VLSI testing and testing strategies are given in Chapters 18 and 19.