A single-chip NMOS analog front-end LSI for modems

Presents a fully integrated analog front-end LSI chip which is an interface system between digital signal processors and existing analog telecommunication networks. The developed analog LSI chip includes many high level function blocks such as A/D and D/A converters with 11 bit resolution, various kinds of SCFs, an AGC circuit, an external control level adjuster, a carrier detector, and a zero crossing detector. Design techniques employed are mainly directed toward circuit size reductions. The LSI chip is fabricated in a 5 /spl mu/m line double polysilicon gate NMOS process. Chip size is 7.14/spl times/6.51 mm. The circuit operates on /spl plusmn/5 V power supplies. Typical power consumption is 270 mW. By using this analog front-end LSI chip and a digital signal processor, modern systems can be successfully constructed in a compact size.     

A CMOS triple 100-Mbit/s video D/A converter with shift register and color map

A 100-Mb/s CMOS video digital-to-analog converter (VDAC) chip is described. The VDAC provides all output functions for a four-plane color video subsystem. Included in this chip are: direct drivers for 75-/spl Omega/ cables; three 100-MHz 4-bit DACs; a color-map memory; video shift registers; cursor logic and a processor interference. The design approaches for both the analog and digital circuitry are discussed. The bench and automatic testing of this high-speed, high-pin-count, combined analog/digital chip are presented.     

CMOS image sensor with mixed-signal processor array

We present a single-chip integration of a CMOS image sensor with an embedded flexible processing array and dedicated analog-to-digital converter. The processor array is designed to perform convolution and transformation algorithms with arbitrary kernels. It has been designed to carry out the multiplication of analog image data with given digital kernel coefficients and to add up the results. The processor array is an analog implementation of a highly parallel architecture which is scalable to any desired sensor resolution while preserving video-rate operation. A prototype implementation has been realized in a 0.6-/spl mu/m CMOS technology. Switched current technique has been applied to obtain compact and robust circuits. The prototype's sensor resolution is 64 /spl times/ 128 pixels. The processor array occupies a small chip area and consumes only a small percentage of the power (250 /spl mu/W) of the whole image sensor.     

A 1.1 G MAC/s sub-word-parallel digital signal processor for wireless communication applications

This work proposes a communication digital signal processor (DSP) suitable for massive signal processing operations in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and code-division multiple-access (CDMA) communication systems. The OFDM-based IEEE 802.11a wireless LAN transceiver and CDMA-based WCDMA uplink receiver are simulated to evaluate the computation requirements of future communication systems. The architecture of the communication digital signal processor is established according to the computational complexity of these simulations. The proposed architecture supports basic butterfly operations, single/double-precision and real- and complex-valued multiplication-and-accumulation (MAC), squared error computation, and add-compare-select (ACS) operation. This butterfly/complex MAC architecture can greatly enhance the execution efficiency of operations often found in communication applications. The processor chip is fabricated using a 0.35-/spl mu/m n-well one-poly four-metal CMOS technology. The fabricated DSP chip reaches a speed of 1.1 G MAC/s when operating in the high-speed mode, and it achieves 4 M MAC/s/mW in the low-power mode.     

A mixed-mode polynomial cellular array processor hardware realization

A mixed-mode cellular array processor is presented in which the processing units (PUs) are coupled with programmable polynomial (linear, quadratic, and cubic) first neighborhood feedback terms. It combines analog and digital processing so that the couplings and the polynomial terms are implemented with analog blocks whereas the integrator is digital, and analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters are used to interface between them. A 10-mm/sup 2/, 1.027 million transistor cellular array processor with 2/spl times/72 PUs and 36 layers of memory in each was manufactured using a 0.25-/spl mu/m digital CMOS process. The array processor can perform gray scale Heun's integration of spatial convolutions with linear, quadratic, and cubic activation functions for a 72/spl times/72 data while keeping all input-output operations during processing local. One complete Heun's iteration round takes 166.4 /spl mu/s and the power consumption during processing is 192 mW. Experimental results of statistical variations in the multipliers and polynomial circuits are shown.     

A single-chip 80-bit floating point processor

A single-chip 80-bit floating point VLSI processor capable of performing 5.6 million floating point operations per second has been realized using 1.2-/spl mu/m n-well CMOS technology. The processor handles 80-bit double-extended floating point data conforming to IEEE standard 754. The chip has 128 microinstructions which are stored in an on-chip ROM. By programming microinstruction sequences in an external control storage, not only basic arithmetic operation but also special arithmetic functions can be performed. A composite design method supported by a hierarchical design automation system was used to quickly lay out 50K gates including a 64-/spl times/64-bit multiplier and 15 kb of memory on a chip with a die size of 10/spl times/10 mm/SUP 2/. Only 11 man-months were required for the effort.     

Implementation of a bipolar real-time image signal processor-RISP-II

The high-speed digital image signal processor RISP-II, an improved version of the original real-time image signal processor (RISP) for gray-level image processing, is discussed. RISP-II has a microprogrammable architecture and a per-chip processing speed of 100 million instructions per second. Multichip processing has been realized by two added features: parallelism and pipelining. In the multichip mode its processing power can easily be increased. As a result, RISP-II is capable of real-time processing of the image data of a moving object. RISP-II, implemented in an advanced bipolar ECL technology, has integrated 20600 elements on a chip of 6/spl times/6 mm/SUP 2/. Its power dissipation is 1.6 W.     

A high-quality digital audio filter set designed by silicon compiler CATHEDRAL-1

The semi-automatic design and custom integration of a high-quality digital audio preamplifier filter set are described. The set consists of an offset filter, ten graphic equalizer sections, and a scratch filter with a worst-case overall signal-to-noise ratio of 10 dB. The silicon compiler CATHEDRAL-1 supports the design from specifications to layout. The combination of efficient synthesis tools with optimisation at all design levels leads to a very compact silicon integration, compared with a general-purpose signal processor approach. An experimental chip is described on which the offset filter, three equalizer sections, and the scratch filter are integrated. The silicon area is 243 mm/SUP 2/ in a conservative 6-/spl mu/m NMOS technology or 8 mm/SUP 2/ when scaling down to 3-/spl mu/m technology, allowing for functional densities up to 0.2 mm/SUP 2/ pole zero, comparable with area requirements for typical switched-capacitor filters. The total filter set requires only 20 mm/SUP 2/ in a 3-/spl mu/m NMOS technology, which demonstrates the potential for low-cost digital high-fidelity signal processing.     

A monolithic 64 bit floating-point coprocessor

A double/single-precision floating-point processor using a titanium disilicide 3.5-/spl mu/m NMOS process achieves double-precision add/subtract, multiply, and divide in 2, 8, and 16 /spl mu/s respectively. The chip has about 35K devices and is about 400 mil on the side. The chip uses a single 5-V supply with TTL-compatible levels on all signals except for the clocks, which require 4.5 V for a logic high. Four input clocks are used to generate eight 50-ns intervals. A -2.5 V substrate bias generator is designed on the chip but uses a pin for an external capacitor. The processor, which is to be used in a desktop implementation of a minicomputer, executes the floating-point instruction set for the micro-Eclipse computer.     

Write pulse Generator for 16x DVD recording with symmetric CMOS inverter ring oscillator

This paper reports the design and measurement results of a write pulse generator IC for rewritable CD and DVD disk drives implemented in a standard digital 0.35 /spl mu/m CMOS technology. The chip is the interface between a processor and a laser driver. It provides accurate timing signals to the laser driver via a four-level differential current interface. Transitions between current levels are programmable with 149 ps resolution at a data rate of 420 Mb/s, corresponding to 16x DVD write speed. The chip includes a digital core managing the different write strategies, a CMOS serial interface to the processor for programming, a low power, low phase noise, 64-phase ring voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) based on CMOS inverters, a phase-locked loop (PLL) locking the VCO to the system clock, and a current interface to the laser driver. The PLL phase noise is -144 dBc/Hz at 10 MHz offset from the 105 MHz carrier. At this frequency, the rms jitter is 1.1 ps with 0.8 mA VCO core supply current. The chip is fully ESD protected.     

A complete single-chip GPS receiver with 1.6-V 24-mW radio in 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS

We have developed a complete single-chip GPS receiver using 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS to meet several important requirements, such as small size, low power, low cost, and high sensitivity for mobile GPS applications. This is the first case in which a radio has been successfully combined with a baseband processor, such as SoC, in a GPS receiver. The GPS chip, with a total size of 6.3 mm /spl times/ 6.3 mm, contains a 2.3 mm /spl times/ 2.0 mm radio part, including RF front end, phase-locked loops, IF functions, and 500 K gates of baseband logic, including mask ROM, SRAM, and dual port SRAM . It is fabricated using 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS technology with a MIM capacitor and operates from a 1.6-2.0-V power supply. Experimental results show a very low power consumption of, typically, 57 mW for a fully functional chip including baseband, and a high sensitivity of -152dBm. Through countermeasures against substrate coupling noise from the digital part, the high sensitivity was successfully achieved without any external low-noise amplifier.     

A single-chip programmable platform based on a multithreaded processor and configurable logic clusters

This paper presents a single-chip programmable platform that integrates most of hardware blocks required in the design of embedded system chips. The platform includes a 32-bit multithreaded RISC processor (MT-RISC), configurable logic clusters (CLCs), programmable first-in-first-out (FIFO) memories, control circuitry, and on-chip memories. For rapid thread switch, a multithreaded processor equipped with a hardware thread scheduling unit is adopted, and configurable logics are grouped into clusters for IP-based design. By integrating both the multithreaded processor and the configurable logic on a single chip, high-level language-based designs can be easily accommodated by performing the complex and concurrent functions of a target chip on the multithreaded processor and implementing the external interface functions into the configurable logic clusters. A 64-mm/sup 2/ prototype chip integrating a four-threaded MT-RISC, three CLCs, programmable FIFOs, and 8-kB on-chip memories is fabricated in a 0.35-/spl mu/m CMOS technology with four metal layers, which operates at 100-MHz clock frequency and consumes 370 mW at 3.3-V power supply.     

General-purpose 128/spl times/128 SIMD processor array with integrated image sensor

A CMOS image sensor/processor chip fabricated in a 0.35 /spl mu/m CMOS technology is presented. The chip contains a general purpose software-programmable SIMD array of 128/spl times/128 processing elements. It executes over 20 GOPS while dissipating 240 mW of power and achieves pixel-processor density of 410 cells/mm/sup 2/. Performance and accuracy measurement results are given.     

A 1-GS/s FFT/IFFT processor for UWB applications

In this paper, we present a novel 128-point FFT/IFFT processor for ultrawideband (UWB) systems. The proposed pipelined FFT architecture, called mixed-radix multipath delay feedback (MRMDF), can provide a higher throughput rate by using the multidata-path scheme. Furthermore, the hardware costs of memory and complex multipliers in MRMDF are only 38.9% and 44.8% of those in the known FFT processor by means of the delay feedback and the data scheduling approaches. The high-radix FFT algorithm is also realized in our processor to reduce the number of complex multiplications. A test chip for the UWB system has been designed and fabricated using 0.18-/spl mu/m single-poly and six-metal CMOS process with a core area of 1.76/spl times/1.76 mm/sup 2/, including an FFT/IFFT processor and a test module. The throughput rate of this fabricated FFT processor is up to 1 Gsample/s while it consumes 175 mW. Power dissipation is 77.6 mW when its throughput rate meets UWB standard in which the FFT throughput rate is 409.6 Msample/s.     

Micropower gradient flow acoustic localizer

A micropower mixed-signal system-on-chip for three-dimensional localization of a broad-band acoustic source is presented. Direction cosines of the source are obtained by relating spatial and temporal differentials in the acoustic traveling wave field acquired across four coplanar microphones at subwavelength spacing. Correlated double sampling and least-squares adaptive cancellation of common-mode leakthrough in the switched-capacitor analog differentials boost localization accuracy at very low aperture. A second stage of mixed-signal least-squares adaptation directly produces digital estimates of the direction cosines. The 3mm /spl times/ 3mm chip in 0.5-/spl mu/m CMOS technology quantizes signal delays with 250-ns resolution at 16-kHz sampling rate, and dissipates 54 /spl mu/W power from a 3-V supply. Field tests of the processor with acoustic enclosure demonstrated its utility and endurance in tracking ground and airborne vehicles. Applications include acoustic surveillance, interactive multimedia, and intelligent hearing aids.     

A 600-MHz VLIW DSP

A 600-MHz VLIW digital signal processor (DSP) delivers 4800 MIPS, 2400 (16 b) or 4800 (8 b) million multiply accumulates (MMACs) at 0.3 mW/MMAC (16 b). The chip has 64M transistors and dissipates 719 mW at 600 MHz and 1.2 V, and 200 mW at 300 MHz and 0.9 V. It has an eight-way VLIW DSP core, a two-level memory system, and an I/O bandwidth of 2.4 GB/s. The chip integrates a c64X DSP core with Viterbi and turbo decoders. Architectural and circuit design approaches to achieve high performance and low power using a semi-custom standard cell methodology, while maintaining backward compatibility, are described. The chip is implemented in a 0.13-/spl mu/m CMOS process with six layers of copper interconnect.     

A 1000 FPS at 128/spl times/128 vision processor with 8-bit digitized I/O

This paper presents a mixed-signal programmable chip for high-speed vision applications. It consists of an array of processing elements, arranged to operate in accordance with the principles of single instruction multiple data (SIMD) computing architectures. This chip, implemented in a 0.35-/spl mu/m fully digital CMOS technology, contains /spl sim/ 3.75 M transistors and exhibits peak performance figures of 330 GOPS (8-bit equivalent giga-operations per second), 3.6 GOPS/mm/sup 2/ and 82.5 GOPS/W. It includes structures for image acquisition and for image processing, meaning that it does not require a separate imager for operation. At the sensory side, integration and log-compression sensing circuits are embedded, thus allowing the chip to handle a large variety of illumination conditions. At the processing plane, analog and digital circuits are employed whose parameters can be programmed and their architecture reconfigured for the realization of software-coded processing algorithms. The chip provides, and accepts, 8-bit digitized data through a 32-bit bidirectional data bus which operates at 120 MB/s. Experimental results show that frame rates of 1000 frames per second (FPS) can be achieved under room illumination conditions; applications using exposures of about 50 /spl mu/s have been recently reached by using special illumination setups. The chip can capture an image, run approximately 150 two-dimensional linear convolutions, and download the result in 8-bit digital format, in less than 1 ms. This feature, together with the possibility of executing sequences of user-definable instructions (stored on a full-custom 32-kb on-chip memory), and storing intermediate results (up to 8 grayscale images) makes the chip a true general-purpose sensory/processing device.     

MSI High-Speed Low-Power GaAs Integrated Circuits Using Schottky Diode FET Logic

A new planar high-density (10/sup -3/ mm/sup 2//gate) GaAs IC technology has been used for fabricating MSI digital circuits containing up to 75 gates/chip. These digital circuits have potential application for gigabit microwave data transmission and processor systems. The circuits consist of Schottky diode FET logic NOR gates, which have provided propagation delays in the 75-200-ps range with dynamic switching energies as low as 27 fJ/gate on ring oscillator structures. Power dissipation levels are compatible with future LSI/VLSI extensions. Operation of D flip-flops (DFF) as binary ripple dividers (/spl divide/2-/spl divide/8) was achieved at 1.9-GHz clock rates, and an 8:1 full-data multiplexer and 1:8 data demultiplexer were demonstrated at 1.1-GHz clock rates. This corresponds to equivalent propagation delays in the 100-175-ps range for these MSI circuits. Finally, a 3x3 parallel multiplier containing 75 gates functioned with a propagation delay of 172 ps/gate and with average gate power dissipations of as low as 0.42 mW/gate.     

A 30-MHz mixed analog/digital signal processor

A multiplying encoder architecture that is implemented in the design of a mixed analog and digital signal processor is presented. The processor is suitable for performing both high-speed A/D conversion and digital filtering in a single chip. The device can resolve the input with 8 b at 30 Msample/s and perform 28 multiply and 28 add operations per sample under typical conditions. The processor is designed for a 28-tap programmable FIR (finite impulse response) filter with analog input signal which can be used for waveform shaping of the modem to obtain the desired transmission performance for business satellite communication and mobile communication. The chip is fabricated in a 1-μm double-polysilicon and double-metal CMOS technology. The chip size is 9.73×8.14 mm², and the chip operates with a single +5.0-V power supply. Typical power dissipation is 950 mW; 330 mW is dissipated in analog and 620 mW is in the digital block     

A 64-point Fourier transform chip for high-speed wireless LAN application using OFDM

In this paper, we present a novel fixed-point 16-bit word-width 64-point FFT/IFFT processor developed primarily for the application in an OFDM-based IEEE 802.11a wireless LAN baseband processor. The 64-point FFT is realized by decomposing it into a two-dimensional structure of 8-point FFTs. This approach reduces the number of required complex multiplications compared to the conventional radix-2 64-point FFT algorithm. The complex multiplication operations are realized using shift-and-add operations. Thus, the processor does not use a two-input digital multiplier. It also does not need any RAM or ROM for internal storage of coefficients. The proposed 64-point FFT/IFFT processor has been fabricated and tested successfully using our in-house 0.25-/spl mu/m BiCMOS technology. The core area of this chip is 6.8 mm/sup 2/. The average dynamic power consumption is 41 mW at 20 MHz operating frequency and 1.8 V supply voltage. The processor completes one parallel-to-parallel (i.e., when all input data are available in parallel and all output data are generated in parallel) 64-point FFT computation in 23 cycles. These features show that though it has been developed primarily for application in the IEEE 802.11a standard, it can be used for any application that requires fast operation as well as low power consumption.