Development of a Dolby S-type IC using a new master slice method

A novel IC has been developed to implement the Dolby S-type noise reduction process. The IC was developed using a novel bipolar master slice (M/S) process. This method has several advantages over full custom IC design, including lower cost, fast turn around time, more design flexibility, and quick assessment and correction of design problems. The advantages of the new M/S method were particularly useful in the design of the S-type IC. This is because the system design changed to accommodate integration and performance requirements, and SPICE evaluation was difficult. The resulting IC is a very-high-performance, low-cost, single package which should find good acceptance among manufacturers and consumers