Title :
Gallium arsenide joins the giants
Author_Institution :
Vitesse Semicond. Corp., Camarillo, CA, USA
fDate :
2/1/1995 12:00:00 AM
Abstract :
Gallium arsenide has enjoyed a unique position in the electronics industry for more than 25 years. GaAs is emerging as the starting material for integrated circuits with one million or more transistors per chip. The technology today is firmly in the domain of high-performance, very large-scale integration (VLSI), with chip clock rates hitting 100 MHz and up, whilst maintaining a reasonable manufacturing cost. Here, the author describes how present forms of GaAs VLSI are higher-performing versions of silicon VLSI. The GaAs transistors just speed up the same old IC concepts. Still in the future are truly novel chips, incorporating devices like optical emitters or microwave amplifiers that can be built only in GaAs III-V compounds
Keywords :
III-V semiconductors; MESFET integrated circuits; MMIC; direct coupled FET logic; gallium arsenide; integrated circuit technology; very high speed integrated circuits; DCFL; GaAs; MESFET circuits; VLSI; chip clock rate; electronics industry; integrated circuits; manufacturing cost; microwave amplifiers; optical emitters; semiconductor; transistors; very large-scale integration; Clocks; Costs; Electronics industry; Gallium arsenide; Integrated circuit technology; Large scale integration; Manufacturing; Optical devices; Silicon; Very large scale integration;
Journal_Title :
Spectrum, IEEE
