Variable threshold transistor for the Schottky FPGA and multilevel storage cell flash arrays
First Claim
1. A mixed signal circuit comprising:
- a plurality of fixed threshold and variable threshold transistors;
a plurality of Schottky barrier diodes;
a plurality of poly silicon film resistors;
a plurality of capacitors; and
a plurality of wiring tracks, wherein all of the elements are on a single substrate to form integrated circuits with implementing macro functions.
1 Assignment
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Accused Products
Abstract
An IC solution utilizing mixed FPGA and MLC arrays is proposed. The process technology is based on the Schottky CMOS devices comprising of CMOS transistors, low barrier Schottky barrier diode (SBD), and multi-level cell (MLC) flash transistors. Circuit architectures are based on the pulsed Schottky CMOS Logic (SCL) gate arrays, wherein a variable threshold NMOS transistor may replace the regular switching transistor. During initialization windows, existing FPGA programming techniques can selectively adjust the VT of the switching transistor, re-configure the intra-connections of the simple SCL gates, complete all global interconnections of various units. Embedded hardware arrays, hardwired blocks, soft macro constructs in one chip, and protocols implementations are parsed. A wide range of circuit applications involving generic IO and logic function generation, ESD and latch up protections, and hot well biasing schemes are presented. The variable threshold transistors thus serve 3 distinctive functions. It acts as an analog device to store directly nonvolatile information in SCL gates. It couples the diode tree logic functions. Finally, it stores and operates large amount of information efficiently. The mixed SCL type FPGA and MLC storages shall emerge as the most compact logic and memory arrays in Si technology. Low power, high performance, and high capacity ICs are designed to mix and replace conventional CMOS-TTL circuits. The idea of multi-value logic composed of binary, ternary, and quaternary hardware and firmware is also introduced.
35 Citations
43 Claims
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1. A mixed signal circuit comprising:
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a plurality of fixed threshold and variable threshold transistors;
a plurality of Schottky barrier diodes;
a plurality of poly silicon film resistors;
a plurality of capacitors; and
a plurality of wiring tracks, wherein all of the elements are on a single substrate to form integrated circuits with implementing macro functions. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19)
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20. A mixed signal circuit comprising:
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a plurality of fixed threshold and variable threshold transistors;
a plurality of Schottky barrier diodes;
a plurality of poly silicon film resistors;
a plurality of capacitors; and
a plurality of wiring tracks, wherein all of the elements are on a single substrate to form integrated circuits with implementing macro functions, wherein the circuit is software driven and wherein the at least a portion of the macro functions can be hardwired macroassets. - View Dependent Claims (21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32)
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33. A mixed signal circuit comprising:
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a plurality of fixed threshold and variable threshold transistors;
a plurality of Schottky barrier diodes;
a plurality of poly silicon film resistors;
a plurality of capacitors; and
a plurality of wiring tracks, wherein all the elements are on a single substrate to form integrated circuits with implementing macro functions, wherein a part of the elements are user programmed and part of the elements are factory programmable, wherein the circuit is software driven. - View Dependent Claims (34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43)
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Specification