OVERVIEW OF COMPLEMENTARY GAAS TECHNOLOGY FOR HIGH-SPEED VLSI CIRCUITS

A self-aligned complementary GaAs (CGaAs) technology (developed at Mot orola) for low-power, portable, digital and mixed-mode circuits is bei ng extended to address high-speed VLSI circuit applications, The proce ss supports full complementary, unipolar (pseudo-DCFL), source-coupled , and dynamic (domino) logic families, Though this technology is not y et mature, it is years ahead of CMOS in terms of fast gate delays at l ow power supply voltages. Complementary circuits operating at 0.9V hav e demonstrated power-delay products of 0.01 mu W/MHz/gate. Propagation delays of unipolar circuits are as low as 25 ps. Logic families can b e mixed on a chip to trade power for delay, CGaAs is being evaluated f or VLSI applications through the design of a PowerPC-architecture micr oprocessor.