High speed-low power gallium arsenide basic logic circuit
AssigneeSperry Corporation
InventorsStephen A. Ransom, Tedd K. Stickel
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The present invention provides a high-speed low-power gallium arsenide basic logic circuit which is capable of being driven by either emitter coupled logic or gallium arsenide logic level signals to provide combinational logic gating such as OR-AND, OR-NAND, OR-AND-OR and OR-AND-NOR capable of driving directly either emitter coupled logic or gallium arsenide logic circuits. The combinational logic gating is basically accomplished by diode logic which performs other functions and which requires less area on an integrated circuit chip than active switching transistors.
Claims10
A high speed gallium arsenide basic logic circuit for processing either emitter coupled logic (ECL) or gallium arsenide (GaAs) signals comprising:
- a plurality of OR gates each having a plurality of individual input lines with at least one forward biased diode connected in series with each input line,
- each said OR gate having an output node connected to said input lines at the cathode side of said diodes,
- said OR gates providing a voltage shift down across said diodes of said input lines,
- a plurality of level shifting networks, each being connected in series with one of said OR gates,
- each said level shifting network comprising at least three diodes of which at least two of said diodes are forward biased to provide a further voltage shift down,
- said plurality of level shifting networks comprising a diode AND gate,
- each said level shifting network having at least one diode which is connected in series to cause a level shift up,
- each diode of said AND gate being forward biased by a pull-up transistor connected to the anode side and a pull-down transistor connected to the cathode side, and
- an amplifier stage connected to the output of said level shifting network, whereby voltage signal levels applied to the input of said OR gates are processed through logic decisions while being shifted down and shifted up before being amplified, thus, providing enhanced speed power products in simplified GaAs logic circuitry.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.