Design and application of a 2500-gate bipolar macrocell array

A very high-speed 2500-gate Si bipolar macrocell array has been developed using a novel macrocell design approach and a 1-μm rule advanced super self-aligned process technology (SST-1A). Using this macrocell array, a 16-bit parallel multiplier is designed and fabricated. The sophisticated circuit design of the macrocell array approach permits this complex function, which is equivalent to having 3024 NOR gates, using only 70% of the total of 756 internal cells. Consequently, a fast multiplication time of 7.5 ns is achieved with a 2.07-W power dissipation. Excellent performance with an average gate delay of 120 ps and average power dissipation of 0.365 mW is demonstrated for an equivalent NOR gate.