BiCMOS circuit technology for a 704 MHz ATM switch LSI

This paper describes BiCMOS level-converter circuits and clock circuits that increase VLSI interface speed to 1 GHz, and their application to a 704 MHz ATM switch LSI. An LSI with a high speed interface requires a BiCMOS multiplexer/demultiplexer (MUX/DEMUX) on the chip to reduce internal operation speed. A MUX/DEMUX with minimum power dissipation and a minimum pattern area can be designed using the proposed converter circuits. The converter circuits, using weakly cross-coupled CMOS inverters and a voltage regulator circuit, can convert signal levels between LCML and positive CMOS at a speed of 500 MHz. Data synchronization in the high speed region is ensured by a new BiCMOS clock circuit consisting of a pure ECL path and retiming circuits. The clock circuit reduces the chip latency fluctuation of the clock signal and absorbs the delay difference between the ECL clock and data through the CMOS circuits. A rerouting-Banyan (RRB) ATM switch, employing both the proposed converter circuits and the clock circuits, has been fabricated with 0.5 μm BiCMOS technology. The LSI, composed of CMOS 15 K gate logic, 8 Kb RAM, I Kb FIFO and ECL 1.6 K gate logic, achieved an operation speed of 704-MHz with power dissipation of 7.2 W     

一种混合信号集成电路衬底耦合噪声分析方法

讨论分析了混合信号集成电路衬底噪声耦合的机理,及对模拟电路性能的影响。提出了一种混合信号集成电路衬底耦合噪声分析方法,基于TSMC 0.35μm 2P4M CMOS工艺,以14位高速电流舵D/A转换器为例,给出了混合信号集成电路衬底耦合噪声分析方法的仿真结果,并与实际测试结果进行比较,证实了分析方法的可信性。     

Optimal usage of CMOS within a BiCMOS technology

The comparison of CMOS to BiCMOS often seen in the literature shows the delays of single-stage circuits driving a capacitive load, with the BiCMOS circuit exhibiting a bold advantage. This comparison is misleading, and it suggests that the highest possible performance chip design implemented in a BiCMOS technology, should use only BiCMOS circuits. When multistage circuits and chip wiring resistance are also considered, CMOS performance is found to be much closer to BiCMOS performance. CMOS circuits are shown to be preferred over BiCMOS circuits for a significant fraction of the chip nets. When nets that can afford a performance decrease are relaxed by using CMOS circuits instead of BiCMOS circuits, the CMOS fraction increases further. High usage of CMOS is desirable for area and yield considerations. Evaluations of the optimal CMOS role in future-generation BiCMOS technologies are expected to show an even larger role for CMOS     

A Low Power Analog CMOS Vision Chip for Edge Detection Using Electronic Switches

An analog CMOS vision chip for edge detection with power consumption below 20 mW was designed by adopting electronic switches. An electronic switch separates the edge detection circuit into two parts: one is a logarithmic compression photocircuit, and the other is a signal processing circuit for edge detection. The electronic switch controls the connection between the two circuits. When the electronic switch is off, it can intercept the current flow through the signal processing circuit and restrict the magnitude of the current flow below several hundred nA. The estimated power consumption of the chip, with 128 × 128 pixels, was below 20 mW. The vision chip was designed using 0.25 µm 1‐poly 5‐metal standard full custom CMOS process technology.     

A new CMOS pixel structure for low-dark-current and large-array-size still imager applications

A pixel structure for still CMOS imager application called the pseudoactive pixel sensor (PAPS) is proposed and analyzed in this paper. It has the advantages of a low dark current, high signal-to-noise ratio, and a high fill factor over the conventional passive pixel sensor imager or active pixel sensor imager. The readout circuit called the zero-bias column buffer-direct-injection structure is also proposed to suppress both the dark current of the photodiode and the leakage current of row switches by keeping both biases of photodiode and the parasitic p-n junction in the column bus at or near zero voltage. The improved double delta sampling circuits are also used to suppress fixed pattern noise, clock feedthrough noise, and channel charge injection. An experimental chip of the proposed PAPS CMOS imager with the format of 352/spl times/288 (CIF) has been fabricated by using a 0.25-/spl mu/m single-poly-five-level-metal (1P5M) n-well CMOS process. The pixel size is 5.8 /spl mu/m/spl times/5.8 /spl mu/m. The pixel readout speed is from 100 kHz to 10 MHz, corresponding to the maximum frame rate above 30 frames/s. The proposed still CMOS imager has a fill factor of 58%, chip size of 3660 /spl mu/m/spl times/3500 /spl mu/m, and power dissipation of 24 mW under the power supply of 3.3 V. The experimental chip has successfully demonstrated the function of the proposed new PAPS structure. It can be applied in the design of large-array-size still CMOS imager systems with a low dark current and high resolution.     

High-speed photonic/electronic conversion

We have successfully demonstrated the integration of an ultrasensitive III-V detector, based on a differential pair of optical thyristors, with a dedicated novel 1 GHz CMOS comparator amplifier followed by an R-S flip flop. The maximum frequency achieved so far for the receiver is 50 MHz. Further work is underway to improve this limit to at least the frequency achievable with the thyristor pair, i.e., several hundreds of MHz. Because of its small area and its high sensitivity to optical input signals, our receiver is a promising building block for CMOS based optoelectronic circuits     

MOSFET-only switched-capacitor circuits in digital CMOS technology

Design techniques are described for the realization of precision high linearity switched-capacitor (SC) stages constructed entirely from MOS transistors. The proposed circuits use the gate-to-channel capacitance of MOSFET's for realizing all capacitors. As a result, they can be fabricated in any inexpensive basic digital CMOS technology, and the chip area occupied by the capacitors can be reduced. A number of different SC stages have been designed and fabricated using the proposed techniques. These included SC amplifiers, gain/loss stages, and data converters. Both the simulations and the experimental results obtained indicate that very high linearity (comparable to that achieved using analog fabrication processes with two poly-Si layers) can be achieved in these circuits using basic CMOS technology     

Adiabatic-CMOS/CMOS-adiabatic logic interface circuit

This paper describes the design of an adiabatic-CMOS/CMOS-adiabatic logic interface circuit for a group of low-power adiabatic logic families with a similar clocking scheme. The circuit provides interfacing between several recently proposed low-power adiabatic logic circuits and traditional digital CMOS circuits. One advantage of this design is that it is insensitive to clock overlap. With the proposed interface circuit, both adiabatic and CMOS logic circuits are able to co-exist on a single chip, taking advantage of the strengths of each approach in the design of low power systems.     

Process Variation-Aware Timing Optimization for Dynamic and Mixed-Static-Dynamic CMOS Logic

The advancement in CMOS technology with the shrinking device size towards 32 nm has allowed for placement of billions of transistor on a single microprocessor chip. Simultaneously, it reduced the logic gate delays to the order of pico seconds. However, these low delays and shrinking device sizes have presented design engineers with two major challenges: timing optimization at high frequencies, and minimizing the vulnerability from process variations. Answering these challenges, this paper presents a process variation-aware transistor sizing algorithm for dynamic CMOS logic, and a process variation-aware timing optimization flow for mixed-static-dynamic CMOS logic. Through implementation on several benchmark circuits, the proposed transistor sizing algorithm for dynamic CMOS logic has demonstrated an average performance improvement in delay by 28%, uncertainty from process variations by 32%, while sacrificing an area of 39%. Also, through implementation on benchmark circuits and a 64-b parallel binary adder, the proposed timing optimization flow for mixed-static-dynamic CMOS logic has demonstrated a performance improvement in delay by 17% and uncertainty from process variations by 13%.      

A self-learning neural network chip with 125 neurons and 10 Kself-organization synapses

A learning neural network LSI chip is described. The chip integrates 125 neuron units and 10K synapse units with the 1.0 μm double-poly-Si, double-metal CMOS technology. Most of this integration has been realized by using a mixed design architecture of digital and analog circuits. The fully feedback connection network LSI can memorize at least 15 patterns with 50 μs learning time for each pattern. Under the condition that each test vector keeps a Hamming distance of 6 from memorized pattern, a correct association rate of 98% is obtained. The relaxation time is 1 to 2 μs. This chip consumes less than 7.5 W     

Measurements and analysis of PLL jitter caused by digital switchingnoise

When integrating analog and digital circuits onto a mixed-mode chip, power supply noise coupling is a major limitation on the performance of the analog circuitry. Several techniques exist for reducing the noise coupling, of which one of the cheapest is separating the power supply distribution networks for the analog and digital circuits. Noise coupling from a digital noise-generating circuit through the power supply/substrate into an analog phase-locked loop (PLL) is analyzed for three different power supply schemes. The main mechanisms for noise coupling are identified by comparing different PLLs and varying their bandwidths. It is found that the main cause of jitter strongly depends on the power supply configuration of the PLL. Measurements were done on mixed-mode designs in a standard 0.25-μm digital CMOS process with a low-resistivity substrate. The same circuits were also implemented with triple-well processing for comparisons     

Area efficient layout design of CMOS circuit for high-density ICs

Efficient layouts have been an active area of research to accommodate the greater number of devices fabricated on a given chip area. In this work a new layout of CMOS circuit is proposed, with an aim to improve its electrical performance and reduce the chip area consumed. The study shows that the design of CMOS circuit and SRAM cells comprising tapered body reduced source fully depleted silicon on insulator (TBRS FD-SOI)-based n- and p-type MOS devices. The proposed TBRS FD-SOI n- and p-MOSFET exhibits lower sub-threshold slope and higher I_on to I_off ratio when compared with FD-SOI MOSFET and FinFET technology. Other parameters like power dissipation, delay time and signal-to-noise margin of CMOS inverter circuits show improvement when compared with available inverter designs. The above device design is used in 6-T SRAM cell so as to see the effect of proposed layout on high density integrated circuits (ICs). The SNM obtained from the proposed SRAM cell is 565 mV which is much better than any other SRAM cell designed at 50 nm gate length MOS device. The Sentaurus TCAD device simulator is used to design the proposed MOS structure.     

Design and application of pipelined dynamic CMOS ternary logic andsimple ternary differential logic

Dynamic CMOS ternary logic circuits that can be used to form a pipelined system with nonoverlapped two-phase clocks are proposed and investigated. The proposed dynamic ternary gates do not dissipate DC power and have full voltage swings. A circuit structure called the simple ternary differential logic (STDL) is also proposed and analyzed, and an optimal procedure is developed. An experimental chip has been fabricated in a 1.2-μm CMOS process and tested. A binary pipelined multiplier has been designed, using the proposed dynamic ternary logic circuits in the interior of the multiplier for coding of radix-2 redundant positive-digit number. The structure has the advantages of higher operating frequency, less latency, and lower device count as compared with the conventional binary parallel pipelined multiplier. The advantages of the circuits over other dynamic ternary logic circuits are shown     

A temperature-stable CMOS variable-gain amplifier with 80-dBlinearly controlled gain range

A CMOS variable-gain amplifier (VGA) using subthreshold exponential region transistors with master-slave control technique is proposed. The proposed technique is applied to an intermediate-frequency VGA with a quadrature demodulator for wireless receivers. The test chip is fabricated using a 0.25-μm CMOS technology. An 80-dB linearly controlled gain range is achieved with exponential voltage-to-current converters using MOS transistors biased in a subthreshold exponential region, and the master-slave control circuits make the gain-control characteristic insensitive to the temperature. The experimental results indicate that the proposed technique is effective for a CMOS variable-gain amplifier     

A charge-trapping-based technique to design low-voltage BiCMOSlogic circuits

New BiCMOS logic circuits employing a charge trapping technique are presented. The circuits include an XOR gate and an adder. Submicrometer technologies are used in the simulation and the circuits' performances are comparatively evaluated with the CMOS and that of the recently reported circuits. The proposed circuits were fabricated using a standard 0.8-μm BiCMOS process. The experimental results obtained from the fabricated chip have verified the functionality of the proposed logic gates     

All-N-logic high-speed true-single-phase dynamic CMOS logic

In this paper, a novel all-N-logic single-phase high speed dynamic CMOS logic is introduced and analyzed. The circuits achieve high speed by eliminating the need for the low-speed P-logic blocks. The use of all-N-logic allows the speed of the proposed circuits to be two to three times the speed of conventional CMOS dynamic circuits. An 2:1 frequency divider, using proposed ANL2 circuits, is simulated using 0.8 μm CMOS technology with the operating clock frequency reaching as high as 1.5 GHz. A pipelined 8-b carry generator of five-stacked NMOS transistors, which operates at a clock rate of over 710 MHz, has also been simulated. Experimental results show that the proposed circuits operate over 910 MHz implemented in a 1.2 μm CMOS technology     

System-level design for test of fully differential analog circuits

Several designs for test techniques for fully differential circuits have recently been proposed. These techniques are based on the inherent data encoding, the fully differential analog code (FDAC), present in differential circuits. These techniques have not previously been verified experimentally. In this paper, we report results from a fabricated test chip which incorporates design for test structures. The test chip is a fully differential fifth-order filter, and was fabricated on a 2-μm CMOS process. The test techniques implemented are derived from a system-level technique developed earlier. The test chip contains fault injection circuitry to emulate faults. Our results demonstrate that the FDAC is a viable design for test technique for analog circuits     

两种低功耗新型过温保护电路的设计

电源管理芯片中过温保护电路用来检测芯片的温度。当温度过高时,过温保护电路输出保护信号,使芯片停止工作,以免温度过高而损坏芯片。为了实现上述过温保护电路功能,提出了两种新型的过温保护电路,不但能够精确地检测芯片的温度,并且功耗很低。采用0．5μm N-阱CMOS工艺的方法,进行电路设计,并使用CadenceSpectre工具进行了仿真实验验证。仿真实验结果表明两种电路仅消耗3μA的电流就能够实现精确的温度检测,其具有较强的适应性,高灵敏度和高精度的特点,应用前景比较广泛。     

A self-timed divider using a new fast and robust pipeline scheme

This paper investigates the potential of self-timed property of differential cascode voltage switch logic (DCVSL) circuits, and examines architectural techniques for achieving self-timing in DCVSL circuits. As a result, a fast and robust handshake scheme for dynamic asynchronous circuit design is proposed. It is novel and more general than other similar schemes. The proposed self-timed datapath scheme is verified by an 8-bit divider which is implemented using AMS 0.6-μm CMOS technology, and the chip size is about 1.66 mm×1.70 mm. The chip testing results show that the divider functions correctly and the latency for 8-bit quotient-digit generation is 17 ns (about 58.8 MHz)     

改进型脉宽调制DC/DC变换芯片的实现

提出了一种改进型的脉宽调制DC/DC变换器的电路结构,该电路具有结构简单、功耗低、转换效率高等特点.根据F0UNDRY提供的模型参数,用EDA工具对芯片主要电路和整个电源系统进行了模拟,给出了模拟结果.采用3μmP阱双层多晶、单层金属CMOS工艺制造芯片.