COMPARISON OF GAAS DCFL AND CMOS TECHNOLOGIES FOR MCM-D IMPLEMENTATIONS OF A MODULARLY CONFIGURED ATTACHED PROCESSOR

This paper describes the comparative evaluation of 1 mu m GaAs DCFL an d silicon CMOS technologies, for implementing a novel Modularly Config ured Attached Processor (MCAP) architecture in MCM-D configuration. Th e transistor count was approximately ten million transistors for both cases, distributed on 25 chip dice. Delay, area and power calculations were performed using the SUSPENS model. Speed was calculated to be in the range of 250 MHz using GaAs DCFL logic whereas, with silicon CMOS technology, speed was in the 100 MHz range. The module footprint was found to be 90 cm(2) and power dissipation per unit area was low enoug h to allow air cooling in both cases.