1-1hit |
Nobutaro SHIBATA Yoshinori GOTOH Shigeru DATE
New memory-macrocell architecture has been developed to obtain high-performance macrocells with a short design Turn-Around-Time (TAT) in ASIC design. The authors propose row- and column-sliceable macrocell architecture in which only nine kinds of rectangular-functional cells, called leaf-cells, are abutted to form macrocells of any sizes. The row-sliceable structure of peripheral circuits is possible due to a newly-developed channel-embedded address decoder combined with via-hole programming. Macrocell performance, especially access time, is kept at a high level by the distributed driver configuration. Zero address-setup time during write operation is actualized by delaying internal write timing with a new delay circuit. A short design TAT of 30 minutes is accomplished due to the simplicity of both macrocell generation and the checking procedure. The macrocells are designed with gate-array and full-custom style, and fabricated with 0.5 µm CMOS technology.