BiCMOS ASICs: technology and applications

It is pointed out that although higher speed and lower power dissipation allow BiCMOS to compete with CMOS and ECL devices, CMOS continues to be the choice for large density, low-power, and cost-sensitive application, and ECL remains the preferred choice for very-high-speed medium-density applications. The latter include cache static RAM, telecom, and interface chips between CMOS and fast ECL and TTL memory. BiCMOS now offers system designers an important bridge between power-hungry ECL and high-density CMOS. BiCMOS SRAMs are the most well-known type of high-performance BiCMOS devices. In addition to SRAMS, BiCMOS DRAMs have also been introduced. BiCMOS gate arrays find widespread acceptance in applications such as high-end personal computers, laser printers, workstations, mini-supers, and telecommunications. A relatively new application for BiCMOS technology is in the area of RISC CPUs