Noncomplementary BiCMOS logic and CMOS logic for low-voltage,low-power operation-a comparative study

This paper presents results of a comprehensive comparative study of six bipolar complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (BiCMOS) noncomplementary logic design styles and two CMOS logic styles for low-voltage, low-power operation. These logic styles have been compared for switching power consumption and power efficiency (power-delay product). The examination offers two alternative approaches never used in other comparative studies. First, all BiCMOS-based styles are compared to low-power CMOS styles as opposed to a single conventional static CMOS style. Second, a low-power methodology has been used as opposed to performance methodology referred to in the previous logic comparisons. The styles examined are bootstrapped BiCMOS, bootstrapped full-swing BiCMOS, bootstrapped bipolar CMOS, Seng-Rofail's bootstrapped BiCMOS, modified full-swing BiCMOS, dynamic full-swing BiCMOS, double pass-transistor CMOS, and inverter-based CMOS. These design styles have been compared at various power supply voltages (0.9-3 V), with various output load capacitances (0.1-1 pF) at the frequency 50 MHz and temperature 27°C. The results clearly show which logic style is the most beneficial for which specific conditions     

BiCMOS nonthreshold logic for high-speed low-power applications

New high-speed low-power BiCMOS nonthreshold logic (BNTL) circuits are presented. These circuits offers a built-in CMOS and bipolar level conversion and are suitable for reduced power supply voltage. A 4-b carry lookahead generator (CLG) circuit is designed in BNTL, ECL, and CMOS using 0.8-μm BiCMOS technology. Circuit simulations show that this new logic provides speed comparable to or better than that provided by emitter-coupled logic (ECL) for lower power dissipation     

Bi-CMOS技术进展(下)

三、Bi-CMOS模拟/数字电路 随着电子系统复杂性的增加以及对可靠性要求的提高,过去那种将模拟电路和数字电路通过PC板互连起来的方法已经不适应。因此,实现A/D LSI已经成为人们追求的目标。这种芯片不仅在数字通讯、测量仪器、图像处理等方面有广泛用途,而且在民用领域,如照像机的自动曝光、录相机的自动聚焦、马达控制、声音的合成和识别等方面也有广阔的市场。     

A new true-single-phase-clocking BiCMOS dynamic pipelined logicfamily for high-speed, low-voltage pipelined system applications

New true-single-phase-clocking (TSPC) BiCMOS/BiNMOS/BiPMOS dynamic logic circuits and BiCMOS/BiNMOS dynamic latch logic circuits for high-speed dynamic pipelined system applications are proposed and analyzed. In the proposed circuits, the bootstrapping technique is utilized to achieve fast near-full-swing operation. The circuit performance of the proposed new dynamic logic circuits and dynamic latch logic circuits in both domino and pipelined applications are simulated by using HSPICE with 1 μm BiCMOS technology. Simulation results have shown that the new dynamic logic circuits and dynamic latch logic circuits in both domino and pipelined applications have better speed performance than that of CMOS and other BiCMOS dynamic logic circuits as the supply voltage is scaled down to 2 V. The operating frequency and power dissipation/MHz of the pipelined system, which is constructed by the new clock-high-evaluate-BiCMOS dynamic latch logic circuit and clock-low-evaluate-BiCMOS (BiNMOS) dynamic latch logic circuit, and the logic units with two stacked MOS transistors, are about 2.36 (2.2) times and 1.15 (1.1) times those of the CMOS TSPC dynamic logic under 1.5-pF output loading at 2 V, respectively. Moreover, the chip area of these two BiCMOS pipelined systems is about 1.9 times and 1.7 times as compared with that of the CMOS TSPC pipelined system. A two-input dynamic AND gate fabricated with 1 μm BiCMOS technology verifies the speed advantage of the new BiNMOS dynamic logic circuit. Due to the excellent circuit performance in high-speed, low-voltage operation, the proposed new dynamic logic circuits and dynamic latch logic circuits are feasible for high-speed, low-voltage dynamic pipelined system applications     

A BiCMOS wired-OR logic

This paper proposes a BiCMOS wired-OR logic for high-speed multiple input logic gates. The logic utilizes the bipolar wired-OR to circumvent the use of a series connection of MOS transistors. The BiCMOS wired-OR logic was found to be the fastest compared with such conventional gates as CMOS NOR, BiCMOS multiemitter logic and CMOS wired-NOR logic, when the number of inputs was more than four and the supply voltage was 3.3 V. The BiCMOS wired-OR logic was also determined to be the fastest of the four when the fan-out number was below 20 and the number of inputs was eight. In addition, the speed was more than twice as faster when the fan-out number was less than 10. The BiCMOS wired-OR logic was applied to a 64-b 2-stage carry look-ahead adder, and was fabricated with a 0.5-μm BiCMOS process technology. A critical path delay time of 3.1 ns from an input to a sum output was obtained at the supply voltage of 3.3 V. This is 35% faster than that of conventional BiCMOS adders     

3.3-V BiCMOS current-mode logic circuits for high-speed adders

New high-speed BiCMOS current mode logic (BCML) circuits for fast carry propagation and generation are described. These circuits are suitable for reduced supply voltage of 3.3-V. A 32-b BiCMOS carry select adder (CSA) is designed using 0.5-μm BiCMOS technology. The BCML circuits are used for the correct carry path for high-speed operation while the rest of the adder is implemented in CMOS to achieve high density and low power dissipation. Simulation results show that the BiCMOS CSA outperforms emitter coupled logic (ECL) and CMOS adders     

三种低压高速低耗BiCMOS三态逻辑门

采用0.35μm B iCM O S工艺技术,设计了三种高性能的B iCM O S三态逻辑门电路,并提出了改进三态门电路结构和优化器件参数的方法和措施。仿真和实验结果表明,所优化设计的B iCM O S三态门的电源电压均小于3.3 V,工作速度比常用的CM O S三态门快约5倍,功耗在60 MH z下仅高出约2.2~3.7 mW,而延迟-功耗积却比该常用的CM O S三态门平均降低了38.1%,因此它们特别适用于低压、高速、低功耗的数字系统。     

A 1-Mbit BiCMOS DRAM using temperature-compensation circuittechniques

A temperature-compensation circuit technique for a dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) with an on-chip voltage limiter is evaluated using a 1-Mb BiCMOS DRAM. It was found that a BiCMOS bandgap reference generator scheme yields an internal voltage immune from temperature and V_cc variation. Also, bipolar-transistor-oriented memory circuits, such as a static BiCMOS word driver, improve delay time at high temperatures. Furthermore, the BiCMOS driver proves to have better temperature characteristics than the CMOS driver. Finally, a 1-Mb BiCMOS DRAM using the proposed technique was found to have better temperature characteristics than the 1-Mb CMOS DRAM which uses similar techniques, as was expected. Thus, BiCMOS DRAMs have improved access time at high temperatures compared with CMOS DRAMs     

A new methodology for design of BiCMOS gates and comparison withCMOS

A gate comparison methodology is presented to accurately compare the performance of an arbitrary BiCMOS logic gate with a pure CMOS gate. The concept of the sizing plane (SP) is introduced as a geometrical framework in which the gate comparison methodology is represented. The sizing plane is also shown to be an elegant platform to represent the constraints and tradeoffs in BiCMOS gate design and this is demonstrated by an example for a 1-μm BiCMOS technology. To illustrate the comparison methodology, BiCMOS and CMOS gates are fabricated in a 2-μm BiCMOS technology. The measured performance results are presented and interpreted using the sizing plane. A technology comparison methodology is proposed that predicts the relative performance of a BiCMOS versus a pure CMOS implementation of any arbitrary block of digital logic     

Bootstrapped full-swing BiCMOS/BiNMOS logic circuits for 1.2-3.3 Vsupply voltage regime

Novel full-swing BiCMOS/BiNMOS logic circuits using bootstrapping in the pull-up section for low supply voltage down to 1 V are reported. These circuit configurations use noncomplementary BiCMOS technology. Simulations have shown that they outperform other BiCMOS circuits at low supply voltage using 0.35 μm BiCMOS process. The delay and power dissipation of several NAND configurations have been compared. The new circuits offer delay reduction between 40 and 66% over CMOS in the range 1.2-3.3 V supply voltage. The minimum fanout at which the new circuits outperform CMOS gate is 5, which is lower than that of other gates particularly for sub-2.5 V operation     

10 K-gate GaAs JFET sea of gates

The first GaAs 10 K-gate sea of gates has been successfully fabricated using junction FETs (JFETs) with a gate length of 0.5 μm. A basic cell is designed to comprise both a direct coupled FET logic (DCFL) four-NOR circuit and a source coupled FET logic (SCFL) inverter circuit with an identical enhancement-type JFET. Each input and output level is designed to be compatible with Si emitter-coupled-logic (ECL), CMOS, and transistor-transistor-logic (TTL) levels. Unloaded and loaded DCFL gate delays are 21 and 180 ps/gate with power consumption of 0.4 and 0.5 mW/gate, respectively. The toggle frequency of the T-type flip-flop is 3.9 and 4.4 GHz for DCFL and SCFL, respectively     

Engineering Approach to CMOS-Logic Optimization Allowing for Internal Capacitances and On-Chip Interconnections

The paper is concerned with the method of logical effort, by which alternative logic-circuit realizations can be evaluated without running simulations. It also represents an engineering approach to optimization of CMOS logic networks for area. The method is modified to allow for the influence of logic-gate capacitances and on-chip interconnections in a multiple-input logic circuit. The former factor is significant in the case of small loads. The latter factor becomes increasingly important to the speed of operation as the technology progresses. The modified method is shown to be considerably more accurate than the standard one while retaining simplicity. Estimations by the modified and the standard method are compared with simulations as applied to the logic portion of the ALU and the address decoder in a general-purpose microprocessor. It is demonstrated that the modified method offers a way to implement the devices with a shorter delay and on a smaller area as well as improving accuracy.     

A 533-MHz BiCMOS superscalar RISC microprocessor

This 533-MHz BiCMOS very large scale integration (VLSI) implementation of the PowerPC architecture contains three pipelines and a large on-chip secondary cache to achieve a peak performance of 1600 MIPS. The 15 mm×10 mm die contains 2.7 M transistors (2M CMOS and 0.7 M bipolar) and dissipates less than 85 W. The die is fabricated in a six-level metal, 0.5-μm BiCMOS process and requires 3.6 and 2.1 V power supplies     

多端I/O系统用BiCMOS连线逻辑电路

为了满足数字通信和信息处理系统多端输入/输出(I/O)、高速、低耗的性能要求,笔者设计了几例BiCMOS连线逻辑电路,并提出了采用0.5 mm BiCMOS工艺,制备所设计的连线逻辑电路的技术要点和元器件参数。所做实验表明了设计的连线逻辑电路既具有双极型逻辑门电路快速、大电流驱动能力的特点,又具备CMOS逻辑门低压、低功耗的长处,而且其扇入数可达3~16,扇出数可达1~18,因而它们特别适用于多端I/O高速数字通信和信息处理系统中。     

MAGFET based current sensing for power integrated circuit

A new on-chip non-invasive integrated current sensing, compatible with standard CMOS technology, has been developed, using a 1.2 μm BiCMOS ALCATEL technology, to sense the current in the drain side of a power MOSFET. The circuit is based on a split-drain magnetic sensor, implemented on the same chip of an integrated gate driver for a power MOSFET. A CMOS biasing circuit with a differential current output is also developed. The simulation results of the current sensing show a conversion gain of 1.25 mV/mT.     

A 76-MHz BiCMOS programmable logic sequencer

A BiCMOS programmable logic sequencer with a maximum operating frequency of 76 MHz at a power dissipation of 370 mW has been developed. The device is organized as 16 inputs, 48 product terms, and eight registered outputs. The excellent speed power performance and TTL/CMOS compatibility were realized by an optimized circuit design coupled with an advanced BiCMOS process. The process features 13-GHz bipolar transistors, 1- mu m CMOS, TiW fuses, poly resistors, three-layer metal, and single-layer polycide. Bipolar devices are used in areas that utilize their strengths such as high current drivers, small-signal sensing, and precise current sources. CMOS is used in other areas to conserve layout size and power.<>     

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     

Full-swing Schottky BiCMOS/BiNMOS and the effects of operatingfrequency and supply voltage scaling

Novel full-swing BiCMOS/BiNMOS logic circuits which use Schottky diode in the pull-up section for low supply-voltage regime are developed. The full-swing pull-up operation is performed by saturating the bipolar transistor with a base current pulse. After which, the base is isolated and bootstrapped to a voltage higher than V_DD. The BiCMOS/BiNMOS circuits do not require a PNP bipolar transistor. They outperform other BiCMOS circuits at low supply voltage, particularly at 2 V using 0.5 μm BiCMOS technology. Delay, area, and power dissipation comparisons have been performed. The new circuits offer delay reduction at 2 V supply voltage of 37% to 56% over CMOS. The minimum fanout at which the new circuits outperform CMOS gate is 2 to 3. Furthermore, the effect of the operating frequency on the delay of a wide range of BiCMOS and BiNMOS circuits is reported for the first time, showing the superiority of the Schottky circuits     

Design and optimization of buffer chains and logic circuits in aBiCMOS environment

The design and optimization of BiCMOS buffer chains and multi level logic circuits are reported. BiCMOS speedup contours are introduced and analytical expressions for the delay are obtained. The speedup contours and the delay expressions were used in the design and optimization of BiCMOS buffer chains. Also, general design guidelines, which can be easily automated, for circuit design in a BiCMOS environment are given. Designing multistage mixed CMOS/BiCMOS buffers, BiCMOS complex logic gates, and multi level CML (current mode logic) gates is also studied     

The Invariance of Characteristic Current Densities in Nanoscale MOSFETs and Its Impact on Algorithmic Design Methodologies and Design Porting of Si(Ge) (Bi)CMOS High-Speed Building Blocks

This paper provides evidence that, as a result of constant-field scaling, the peak$f_T$(approx. 0.3$hbox mA/muhbox m$), peak$f_ MAX$(approx. 0.2$hbox mA/muhbox m$), and optimum noise figure$ NF_ MIN$(approx. 0.15$hbox mA/muhbox m$) current densities of Si and SOI n-channel MOSFETs are largely unchanged over technology nodes and foundries. It is demonstrated that the characteristic current densities also remain invariant for the most common circuit topologies such as MOSFET cascodes, MOS-SiGe HBT cascodes, current-mode logic (CML) gates, and nMOS transimpedance amplifiers (TIAs) with active pMOSFET loads. As a consequence, it is proposed that constant current-density biasing schemes be applied to MOSFET analog/mixed-signal/RF and high-speed digital circuit design. This will alleviate the problem of ever-diminishing effective gate voltages as CMOS is scaled below 90 nm, and will reduce the impact of statistical process variation, temperature and bias current variation on circuit performance. The second half of the paper illustrates that constant current-density biasing allows for the porting of SiGe BiCMOS cascode operational amplifiers, low-noise CMOS TIAs, and MOS-CML and BiCMOS-CML logic gates and output drivers between technology nodes and foundries, and even from bulk CMOS to SOI processes, with little or no redesign. Examples are provided of several record-setting circuits such as: 1) SiGe BiCMOS operational amplifiers with up to 37-GHz unity gain bandwidth; 2) a 2.5-V SiGe BiCMOS high-speed logic chip set consisting of 49-GHz retimer, 40-GHz TIAs, 80-GHz output driver with pre-emphasis and output swing control; and 3) 1-V 90-nm bulk and SOI CMOS TIAs with over 26-GHz bandwidth, less than 8-dB noise figure and operating at data rates up to 38.8 Gb/s. Such building blocks are required for the next generation of low-power 40–80 Gb/s wireline transceivers.