Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

Haruyasu Yamada

Toyoki Takemoto

Akira Matsuzawa

Toshiki Mori

Tsutomu Fujita

Tadao Komeda

Kunitoshi Aono

Hiroyuki Sakai

Michihiro Inoue

Masakatsu Maruyama

Kenichi Hasegawa

Shota Nakashima

Eiichi Tsuboka

Takeji Kimura

Jun Shibata

Yuichi Hirofuji

Shuzi Harada

Hirokazu Yoshino

Tomio Oyama

In an integrated circuit comprising an IIL and a high frequency npn bipolar transistor which has a deep p.sup.- -type base region 45 for its inverted npn output transistors, circuit elements such as a resistor part R, a capacitor part C, a diode part D and an isolated crossing connection part Cr are provided with deep p.sup.- -type regions 54, 54', 65', 71 and 82 which are formed at the same time with the p.sup.- -type region 45 in the IIL, and thereby, reliability of the circuit elements as well as characteristic thereof are improved, thereby further improving manufacturing yields.

Semiconductor integrated circuit

Analog-to-digital conversion method and device using triangular vertex solution are disclosed. The method includes the steps of defining a first and a second boundary value between which a quantity to be analog-to-digital converted resides, multiplying a difference between the first boundary value and the quantity to be converted by a first coefficient to produce a first physical quantity, multiplying a difference between the second boundary value and the quantity to be converted by a second coefficient to produce a second physical quantity, comparing the first and second physical quantities to obtain a comparison result, and logically converting the comparison result into a digital value. The device includes a first differential converting circuit for generating one or more voltages, which are produced by multiplying a potential difference between a first reference voltage and an input analog voltage by a chain of first coefficients, a second differential converting circuit for generating one or more voltages, which are produced by multiplying a potential difference between a second reference voltage and the input analog voltage by a chain of second coefficients, and a comparator circuit for comparing output voltages of the first and second differential converting circuits, with the output of the comparator circuit being logically converted into a digital value.

Analog-to-digital conversion method and device

A parallel type analog to digital (A/D) converter in which an input signal and reference voltages are differentially amplified by differential converting circuits, interpolation resistors are inserted between the outputs and between the complementary outputs of the differential converting circuits, and a tap voltage between the interpolation resistors is A/D converted, so that the A/D converter can operate at a high accuracy and at a high speed.

A/D converter with complementary interpolating voltage dividers

A dynamic logic gate includes a precharge device for precharging the logic gate in synchronism with a clock; a partial logic gate arranged such that, depending on the logic states of the logic inputs, current is allowed to flow between its two terminals or is cut off; a bipolar transistor whose emitter is grounded, and a discharge device for discharging the charge stored in the base of the bipolar transistor during the precharge period. The logic gate speeds up the logic operation by suddenly discharging the load capacity of the circuitry by supplying the conducting current of the partial logic gate to the bipolar transistor base and using the high speed current amplification action of the bipolar transistor.

Dynamic BiCMOS logic gates

A dynamic logic gate includes a precharge device for precharging the logic gate in synchronism with a clock; a partial logic gate arranged such that, depending on the logic states of the logic inputs, current in allowed to flow between its two terminals or is cut off; a bipolar transistor whose emitter is grounded, and a discharge device for discharging the charge stored in the base of the bipolar transistor during the precharge period. The logic gate speeds up the logic operation by suddenly discharging the load capacity of the circuitry by supplying the conducting current of the partial logic gate to the bipolar transistor base and using the high speed current amplification action of the bipolar transistor.

Dynamic logic gates

In a semiconductor IC, a vertical pnp or npn transistor of a uniform characteristic and a high breakdown voltage is made by forming, for example, a p.sup.- -collector region (39) in an n-type epitaxial region, an n-well base region (41) formed in the p.sup.- -collector region (39) and a p-emitter region (42) formed in the n-well base region (41); and furthermore, for example as shown in FIG. 9, p.sup.- -regions (40) and (49) are formed simultaneously with the p.sup.- -collector region (39) and an n-region (53) is formed simultaneously with the n-well base region (41), thereby constituting IIL of superior characteristics and a high resistance device at the same time as forming of the vertical transistor without substantial increase of manufacturing steps; and in the similar way, by combining the p.sup.- -region and n-region formed in the above-mentioned simultaneous steps with other region formed simultaneously with the forming of the vertical transistor, high h.sub.FE transistor, high speed vertical npn transistor, cross-over devices, p-channel and/or n-channel MOS transistors can be formed within limited manufacturing steps.

Method of making semiconductor IC including polar transistors

The invention relates to a BIMOS logic gate comprising: a bipolar transistor; and depletion type MOS transistors whose sources are connected to a base of the bipolar transistor or MOS transistors having a threshold voltage smaller than that of MOS transistors constructing another complementary type logic circuit. A current of the bipolar transistor flows at an input voltage lower than that of the related art BIMOS logic gate and the current can be cut off by an input voltage which is equal to that of the ordinary complementary type logic circuit. Thus, the gate operates at a low electric power and can operate at a high speed at a low power source voltage.

Fast trailing BIMOS logic gate

A serial-parallel type a/d converter comprises first comparators whose one input is supplied with an input signal, for producing upper-digit signals; a circuit for supplying first different potentials determined according to arithmetic progression with respect to a reference potential to respective another input of the first comparators when the control signal is of first state, and for producing N-1 second different potentials with difference 1/N of voltage difference of first potentials over potential P (N, P: natural numbers) given by the upper-digit signals when the control signal is of second state; and N-1 second comparators whose one input is supplied with the input signal and another input is supplied with the respective second different potentials for producing lower-digit signals. A second a/d converter further comprises a circuit for additional reference potentials and additional comparators to make the lower-digit conversion range larger than one unit of the upper-digit conversion to improve conversion speed limited by settling time. Also, the upper-digit can be corrected by output from additional comparators. The number of comparators is reduced by switches for switching over from upper-digit to lower-digit potentials sent to the comparators.

Serial-parallel type A/D converter having reference resistor chain and

A parallel type A/D converter includes circuitry for generating plural reference voltages, comparators for comparing the plural reference voltages with an input voltage, logic circuits for logically processing the outputs of comparators, and an encoder circuit for encoding the outputs from the logic circuits. A pair of logic outputs are obtained by a first logic circuit chain for receiving as inputs the outputs of a comparator of number i and of a comparator i+2. Conversion errors are reduced by properly processing this pair of logic outputs in a second logic circuit, or by composing an encoder circuit for receiving the pair of logic outputs as inputs.

Parallel type A/D converter

An image signal processor which includes a local image register for receiving local image area data of m rows.times.n columns pixels, and a expansion use register of m row.times.1 column pixels coupled to the output of the local image register. Thereby, expansion of local image area, and parallel processing can be readily conducted.

Image signal processor

Method of making bipolar transistors

An image signal processor which includes a local image register for receiving local image area data of m rows.times.n columns pixels, and a expansion use register of m row.times.l column pixels coupled to the output of the local image register. Thereby, expansion of local image area, and parallel processing can be readily conducted.

This invention provides parallel partial image processing such as spatial convolution or non-linear neighbor arithmetic operation using an image processor which can easily be formed as a large-scale integrated circuit and can be used for various purposes. The image processor has an adder-subtractor, a multiplier, a reciprocal number memory in which the reciprocal of an address and the amount of shift are stored at each address, and a shift register. The processor therefore is capable of high-speed dividing operations by multiplying a multiplicant by the reciprocal of a multiplier and by shifting the result of the multiplication. Also, by switching the inputs to the adder-subtractor and to the multiplier rapidly under program control, it is possible to perform arbitrary addition, subtraction, multiplication and division on partial image data of m rows and n columns stored in a partial image memory of the image processor.

Image processor

To extend the function of a bipolar type RAM, a register function is added to the RAM function. The register function is such that the contents stored in a memory cell is inputted to a differential switch, and the output to the differential switch is derived out to constantly read out the stored content of a desired bit with a simple circuit construction.

Semiconductor memory with constant readout capability

A semiconductor integrated circuit device in which the side surfaces of an emitter of an oxide isolated bipolar transistor are surrounded with insulating compounds or regions so that the capacitance between the emitter and base is lowered and a base is formed by the self-alignment so that the influence of an active base between an external base and the emitter can be made negligible. Thus the base resistance and parasitic capacitance are lowered.

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Hirakata, Japan

Haruyasu Yamada