US 3,996,481 AGranted

FET load gate compensator

AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation

InventorsWilliam M. Chu, James M. Lee

Life of this patent

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Abstract

An FET load gate compensator employing feedback to control the load gate voltage holds the circuit delay and power dissipation of an integrated circuit nearly constant. The integrated circuit chip is provided with several stages of inverters which act as a delay sensor to simulate the delay of the operational circuit on the chip. The time delay of the delay sensor on the integrated circuit chip is compared with an external clock reference by a delay comparator. The delay comparator generates an output voltage which is used to adjust the load gate voltage until the delay in the delay sensor is equal to the clock reference. Since the same load gate voltage is distributed in the rest of the operational circuits in the integrated circuit chip, the delay times of these circuits will track with that of the delay sensor and thus also tend to be held constant.

Claims12

Dependent claims

An FET load gate compensator for regulating circuit delay and power dissipation of FET integrated circuits, comprising:

timing generator means adapted to receive an external clock for generating a time reference signal,
delay sensor means in an FET integrated circuit chip for simulating the circuit delay of an operational circuit in the FET integrated circuit chip, said delay sensor means producing a signal representing said circuit delay,
delay comparator means connected to receive said time reference signal and said circuit delay signal for producing a control output signal which varies according to the equality or inequality of the time reference signal and the circuit delay signal, and
load gate voltage generating means connected to supply a load gate voltage to the FET integrated circuit chip and responsive to said control output signal to vary said load gate voltage to cause said circuit delay signal to be equal to said time reference signal.

1 more element

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 05/525,133Filed 19 Nov 1974
Granted: 7 Dec 1976
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification8 codes

H03K 17/145
Modifications for compensating variations of physical values, e.g. of temperature: in field-effect transistor switches
H02M 3/07
Using resistors or capacitors, e.g. potential divider: using capacitors charged and discharged alternately by semiconductor devices with control…
H02M 3/155
Using devices of a triode or transistor type requiring continuous application of a control signal: using semiconductor devices only
H03K 3/356078
Using additional transistors in the feedback circuit: with synchronous operation