An ECL gate with improved speed and low power in a BiCMOS process

An emitter-coupled logic (ECL) gate exhibiting an improved speed-power product over the circuits presented in the past is described. The improvement is due to a combination of a push-pull output stage driven by a controlled current source, thus reducing the static and increasing the dynamic current. This circuit has better driving capabilities and improved speed, yet it uses an order of magnitude less power than a regular ECL gate. Due to its reduced power consumption, this gate allows for a higher level of integration of ECL logic. The realization of this circuit using a regular bipolar process is also possible     

Synthesis of generalised characteristic model for high-speed interconnects using current sources approach

The derivation of an efficient Norton equivalent companion GCM for coupled interconnects in high-speed circuits is presented. The proposed model contains fewer nodes compared to its The/spl acute/venin counterpart and hence accelerates the SPICE solution process. An application example with coupled microstrip lines driven by a bipolar ECL OR gate is given to demonstrate the efficiency. Comparison with the FDTD-SPICE simulation results substantiates the validity of this approach.     

Diode-HBT-logic circuits monolithically integrable with ECl/CMLcircuits

A novel logic approach, diode-HBT logic (DHL), that is implemented with GaAlAs/GaAs HBTs and Schottky diodes to provide high-density and low-power digital circuit operation is described. This logic family was realized with the same technology used to produce emitter-coupled-logic/current-mode-logic (ECL/CML) circuits. The logic operation was demonstrated with a 19-stage ring oscillator and a frequency divider. A gate delay of 160 ps was measured with 1.1 mW of power per gate. The divider worked properly up to 6 GHz. Layouts of a DHL flip-flop and divider showed that circuit area and transistor count can be reduced by about a factor of 3, relative to ECL/CML circuits. The new logic approach allows monolithic integration of high-speed ECL/CML circuits with high-density DHL circuits with high-density DHL circuits     

An ultra-high-speed ECL-BiCMOS technology with silicon filletself-aligned contacts

We have developed a half-micron super self-aligned BiCMOS technology for high speed application. A new SIlicon Fillet self-aligned conTact (SIFT) process is integrated in this BiCMOS technology enabling high speed performances for both CMOS and ECL bipolar circuits. In this paper, we describe the process design, device characteristics and circuit performance of this BiCMOS technology. The minimum CMOS gate delay is 38 ps on 0.5 μm gate and 50 ps on 0.6 μm gate ring oscillators at 5 V. Bipolar ECL gate delay is 24 ps on 0.6 μm emitter ring oscillators with collector current density of 40 kA/cm². A single phase decision circuit operating error free over 8 Gb/s and a static frequency divider operating at 13.5 GHz is demonstrated in our BiCMOS technology     

TFSOI complementary BiCMOS technology for low power applications

A Thin-Film-Silicon-On-Insulator Complementary BiCMOS (TFSOI CBiCMOS) technology has been developed for low power applications. The technology is based on a manufacturable, near-fully-depleted 0.5 μm CMOS process with the lateral bipolar devices integrated as drop-in modules for CBiCMOS circuits. The near-fully-depleted CMOS device design minimizes sensitivity to silicon thickness variation while maintaining the benefits of SOI devices. The bipolar device structure emphasizes use of a silicided polysilicon base contact to reduce base resistance and minimize current crowding effects. A split-oxide spacer integration allows independent control of the bipolar base width and emitter contact spacing. Excellent low power performance is demonstrated through low current ECL and low voltage, low power CMOS circuits. A 70 ps ECL gate delay at a gate current of 20 μA is achieved. This represents a factor of 3 improvement over bulk trench-isolated double-polysilicon self-aligned bipolar circuits. Similarly, CMOS gate delay shows a factor of 2 improvement over bulk silicon at a power supply voltage of 3.3 V. Finally, a 460 μW 1 GHz prescaler circuit is demonstrated using this technology     

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     

A high speed GaAs error-detection circuit for fiber-optictransmission systems

A high-speed GaAs IC for detection of line code vibrations is described. This 144-gate error-detection circuit for monitoring a high-bit-rate fiber-optic link has been designed and fabricated using a high-yield titanium tungsten nitride self-aligned gate MESFET process. This process routinely provides a wafer-averaged gate delay (fan-in=fan-out=2) of less than 70 ps with a power dissipation of 0.5 mW/gate. The error-detection circuits were tested on-wafer using high-frequency probe cards at a clock rate of 1.4 GHz, with a yield of 64%. Packaged circuits worked at a clock frequency of over 2.5 GHz and consumed 200-mW power at a fixed power supply voltage of 1.5 V. The circuits operate over a wide variation in power supply voltage and temperature. When operated at a package temperature of 125°C, the circuits show less than a 12% degradation in their maximum clock frequency. The circuit was inserted into a 565-Mb/s system currently using a silicon ECL part, and full functionality was verified with no necessary modifications     

反馈式ECL记忆门的记忆性能和移位计数器

经过数学论证表明,改进反馈式ECL(MFECL)门可在二个状态中任一态保持稳定,所以认为MFECL门就是一种ECL记忆门或D锁存器.提出了一种由两个ECL记忆门组成的ECL主从D触发器.在上述理论基础上,利用此主从D触发器设计出5进制移位型计数器.经过计算机模拟上述电路,验证了理论和电路的正确性.     

A high-speed, low-power bipolar digital circuit for Gb/s LSI's:current mirror control logic

A novel low-power bipolar circuit for Gb/s LSIs, current mirror control logic (CMCL), is described. To reduce supply voltage and currents, the current sources of emitter-coupled-logic (ECL) series gate circuits are removed and the lower differential pairs are controlled by current mirror circuits. This enables circuits with the same function as two-stacked ECL circuits to operate at supply voltage of -2.0 V and reduces the current drawn through the driving circuits for the differential pairs to 50% of the conventional level shift circuits (emitter followers) in ECL. This CMCL circuit achieves 3.1-Gb/s (D-FF) and 4.3-GHz (T-FF) operation with a power supply voltage of -2.0 V and power dissipation of only 1.8 mW/(FF)     

High-speed frequency dividers using self-aligned AlGaAs/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistors

A divide-by-four frequency divider and ring oscillators have been fabricated employing self-aligned AlGaAs/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBT's). Maximum toggle frequency of 13.7 GHz and propagation delay time of 17.2 ps are achieved in ECL gate circuitry. These values are the highest and the lowest in ECL circuits and in bipolar circuits, respectively, ever reported.     

Sub-30-ps ECL circuit operation at liquid-nitrogen temperatureusing self-aligned epitaxial SiGe-base bipolar transistors

The authors report the operation of emitter coupled logic (ECL) circuits at liquid-nitrogen temperature using self-aligned epitaxial SiGe-base bipolar transistors. A minimum ECL gate delay of 28.1 ps at 84 K was measured; this is essentially unchanged from the room-temperature value of 28.8 ps at 310 K. This delay number was achieved under full logic-swing (500-mV) conditions and represents an improvement of greater than a factor of 2 over the best reported value for 84 K operation. Lower-power ECL circuits have switching speeds as fast as 51 ps at 2.2 mW (112-fJ power-delay product) at 84 K. These results suggest that silicon-based bipolar technology is suitable for very-high-speed applications in cryogenic computer systems     

A 12-ns ECL I/O 256 K×1-bit SRAM using a 1-μm BiCMOStechnology

An ECL (emitter-coupled-logic) I/O 256K×1-bit SRAM (static random-access memory) has been developed using a 1-μm BiCMOS technology. The double-level-poly, double-level-metal process produces 0.8-μm CMOS effective gate lengths and polysilicon emitter bipolar transistors. A zero-DC-power ECL-to-CMOS translation scheme has been implemented to interface the ECL periphery circuits to the CMOS decode and NMOS matrix. Low-impedance bit-line loads were used to minimize read access time. Minimization of bit-line recovery time after a write cycle is achieved through the use of a bipolar/CMOS write recovery method. Full-die simulations were performed using HSPICE on a CRAY-1     

A high-speed complementary silicon bipolar technology with 12-fJpower-delay product

A complementary silicon bipolar technology offering a substantial improvement in power-delay performance over conventional n-p-n-only bipolar technology is demonstrated. High-speed n-p-n and p-n-p double-polysilicon, self-aligned transistors were fabricated in a 20-mask-count integrated process using an experimental test site designed specifically for complementary bipolar applications. N-p-n and p-n-p transistors with 0.50-μm emitter widths have cutoff frequencies of 50 GHz and 13 GHz, respectively. Two novel complementary bipolar circuits-AC-coupled complementary push-pull ECL, and NTL with complementary emitter-follower-display a significant advantage in power dissipation as well as gate delay when compared to conventional n-p-n-only ECL circuits. Record power-delay products of 34 fJ (23.2 ps at 1.48 mW) and 12 fJ (19.0 ps at 0.65 mW) were achieved for these unloaded complementary circuits, respectively. These results demonstrate the feasibility and resultant performance leverage of high-speed complementary bipolar technologies     

Novel high speed circuit structures for BiCMOS environment

Novel high speed BiCMOS circuits including ECL/CMOS, CMOS/ECL interface circuits and a BiCMOS sense amplifier are presented. A generic 0.8 μm complementary BiCMOS technology has been used in the circuit design. Circuit simulations show superior performance of the novel circuits over conventional designs. The time delays of the proposed ECL/CMOS interface circuits, the dynamic reference voltage CMOS/ECL interface circuit and the BiCMOS sense amplifier are improved by 20, 250, and 60%, respectively. All the proposed circuits maintain speed advantage until the supply voltage is scaled down to 3.3 V     

A 9.5-Gb/s Si-bipolar ECL array

A 9.5-Gb/s Si-bipolar ECL array that has a gate delay of 35 ps, a risetime of 45 ps, and a falltime of 40 ps is described. The ECL circuit design and the chip layout were optimized. A Si-bipolar process with 0.3-μm emitter width and packaging capable of accepting 10-GHz signal were used. The array was used in three key circuits of an optical communication system: a decision circuit, a 4:1 multiplexer, and a 1:4 demultiplexer. Operation of the decision circuit at 9.5 Gb/s, of the 4:1 multiplexer at 6.7 Gb/s, and of the 1:4 demultiplexer at 6.7 Gb/s were confirmed     

基于线性“与或”门的新型超高速数字电路

本文指出了线性“与或”门与发射极功能逻辑(EFL)的联系,通过理论计算与PSPICE模拟证明了线性“与或”门的极高速工作特性和可多级级联工作能力。在对线性“与或”门所需配用的高速开关分析基础上,设计了两种ECL电路。本文还讨论了应用线性“与或”门设计超高速数字电路的准则以及有关的组合和时序电路设计实例。     

Integration of a double-polysilicon emitter-base self-alignedbipolar transistor into a 0.5-μm BiCMOS technology for fast 4-MbSRAM's

The single-polysilicon non-self-aligned bipolar transistor in a 0.5-μm BiCMOS technology has been converted into a double-polysilicon emitter-base self-aligned bipolar transistor with little increase in process complexity. Improved bipolar performance in the form of smaller base resistance and base-collector capacitance, larger knee current, higher peak cutoff frequency, and shorter ECL gate delay has been demonstrated. This technology will prove useful in meeting the requirements for higher performance in fast, high-density, SRAM circuits     

A 6-ns ECL 100 K I/O and 8-ns 3.3-V TTL I/O 4-Mb BiCMOS SRAM

The authors report a 4 M word×1 b/1 M word×4 b BiCMOS SRAM that can be metal mask programmed as either a 6-ns access time for an ECL 100 K I/O interface to an 8-ns access time for a 3.3-V TTL I/O interface. Die size is 18.87 mm×8.77 mm. Memory cell size is 5.8 μm×3.2 μm. In order to achieve such high-speed address access times the following technologies were developed: (1) a BiCMOS level converter that directly connects the ECL signal level to the CMOS level; (2) a high-speed BiCMOS circuit with low threshold voltage nMOSFETs; (3) a design method for determining the optimum number of decoder gate stages and the optimum size of gate transistors; (4) high-speed bipolar sensing circuits used at 3.3-V supply voltage; and (5) 0.55-μm BiCMOS process technology with a triple-well structure     

Full functionality of LSI gate arrays fabricated on 3-in-diameter,MOCVD-grown GaAs-on-silicon substrates

Fully functional, 504-gate arrays have been fabricated on an MOCVD (metalorganic chemical-vapor deposition)-grown, 3-in-diameter, GaAs-on-silicon substrate. Each ECL (emitter-coupled-logic)-compatible gate array consists of an eight-bit adder, a D flip-flop, a 214 divider (with a divide-by-four tap), and a 263-stage inverter string. These circuits represent 90% gate utilization, or approximately 6600 transistors. The wafer-level yield of fully functional gate arrays is 10.7%. This demonstrates total functionality and yield for a digital circuit with LSI-level complexity using MOCVD-grown GaAs-on-silicon material and shows that this material, even with defect densities greater than 108 cm^-2, is viable for high-density LSI circuits