A 20 K CMOS array with 200-ps gate delay

A 20 K NAND2 equivalent CMOS gate array prototype with 0.5-μm channel length FETs is described. The 7.5×7.5-mm chip is designed for high performance with 200-ps gate delay. Large macros such as a 32-b RISC (reduced instruction-set computer) processor and 128×8 SRAM (static random-access memory) have been implemented with automatic placement and wiring tools. Their respective predicted performances of 17-ns cycle and 6.1-ns access time have been verified. This confirms that the speed of complex functions in half-micrometer-channel-length CMOS technology is getting close to the speed achieved by current bipolar hardware