A scalable 2 V, 20 GHz FPGA using SiGe HBT BiCMOS technology

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a new power saving, high speed FPGA design enhancing a previous SiGe CML FPGA based on the Xilinx 6200 FPGA. The design aims at having a higher performance but minimizing power consumption. The new SiGe process has traded off the circuit's performance for reduced power consumption. The power supply voltage has been reduced from 3.4 V to 2.0 V. The structure of the Basic Cell, including the Configurable Logic Block (CLB) and routing multiplexers (MUXs), has been modified so that the supply voltage reduction can be attained. Simulations have shown that the gate delay of the new Basic Cell is reduced from 130 ps in the prior design to 51 ps. The total power consumption for each Basic Cell has been reduced 94% from 71 mW to 4.2 mW, making a large scale FPGA feasible. This design is currently under fabrication for testing.

REFERENCES

• 1: John F. McDonald , Bryan S. Goda, Reconfigurable FPGA's in the 1-20 GHz Band with HBT BiCMOS, Proceedings of the 1st NASA/DOD workshop on Evolvable Hardware, p.188, July 19-21, 1999
• 2: Bryan S. Goda, John F. McDonald, Stephen R. Carlough, Thomas W. Krawczyk Jr. and Russell P. Kraft, "IEE Proc.-Compu. Digi. Tech, vol.147, no. 3 pp. 189--194.
• 3: Ken Martin, "Digital integrated circuit design", Oxford University Press Inc, pp 334.
• 4: "IBM SiGe Designer's manual", (IBM Inc. Burlington Vermont. 2001)
• 5: Greg Freeman et al, "40 Gb/s Circuits Built from a 120 GHz fT SiGe Technology", IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits, vol. 9. September, 2002, pp. 1106--1114.
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• 7: Gerd Schuppener, Costantino Pala and Mehran Mokhtari, "Investigation on Low- Voltage Low- Power Silicon Bipolar Topology High Speed Digital Circuits", IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits, vol. 35 no. 7 July 2000, pp. 1051--1054.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  B. Hardware
  B.7 INTEGRATED CIRCUITS
      B.7.1 Types and Design Styles
          Subjects: Advanced technologies

Additional Classification:
  B. Hardware
  B.7 INTEGRATED CIRCUITS
      B.7.1 Types and Design Styles
          Subjects: VLSI (very large scale integration); Gate arrays

  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.3 Language Constructs and Features

General Terms:
Design

Keywords:
CML, FPGA, SiGe, basic cell