FULL-SWING SCHOTTKY BICMOS BINMOS AND THE EFFECTS OF OPERATING FREQUENCY 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. T he full-swing pull-up operation is performed by saturating the bipolar transistor with a base current pulse. After which, the base is isolat ed and bootstrapped to a voltage higher than V(DD). The BiCMOS/BiNMOS circuits do not require a PNP bipolar transistor. They outperform othe r BiCMOS circuits at low supply voltage, particularly at 2 V using 0.5 mum BiCMOS technology. Delay, area, and power dissipation comparisons have been performed. The new circuits offer delay reduction at 2 V su pply 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 o f the operating frequency on the delay of a wide range of BiCMOS and B iNMOS circuits is reported for the first time, showing the superiority of the Schottky circuits.