A 18 Mb/s BiCMOS disk drive data separator

A high-performance BiCMOS data separator IC has been created with a 1.5 GHz NPN FT, 2 mu m EXAR modular CMOS process. Equivalent performance to bipolar implementations have been achieved at one half of the die size and nearly one quarter of the power. A versatile N2000 EXAR process and cell library was used for this design. The process features a well-characterized cell library containing nearly all required cells. Minimal cell design or adaption was necessary. The addition of two mask layers for buried layer and p base allows the inclusion of both an npn transistor and a lateral pnp device. There are 16 mask steps used. The process has two levels of metal and dual poly for interconnection.<
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