Tanner Research, Inc.

California Institute of Technology

John Edward Tanner

Massimo Antonio Sivilotti

Jin Luo

Carver A Mead

Effective passivation structures and guard rings can be formed in borderless gate arrays by forming the gates in an array of discrete blocks separated by thin scribe lines in which the substrate is not covered by gates. Diffusions for guard rings can be formed in the substrate for guard ring purposes, and passivation structures can be sealingly attached to the substrate. Various circuit metalizations such as discrete layers or different circuits can be produced with a single mask by covering all but a selected portion of the mask during exposure.

Method of fabricating various-sized passivated integrated circuit chips from a borderless gate array

An optical mouse utilizing a linear array of photodiodes is provided with circuitry to correlate during each self-timed cycle a new image with a stored image from the previous cycle with the new image offset relative to the stored image one pixel (photodiode signal) to the right, one pixel to the left, and also with no offset. All three correlations are done at the same time in separate correlators. Decision as to motion to the right, to the left or no motion is made on the basis of maximum correlation output. The new image is not stored in a second store array for use during the next cycle until any motion is detected, but it is stored in a first store array during the cycle when half the precharged photodiodes discharge below a predetermined level in response to incident light. A new cycle is initiated by precharging the photodiodes when any decision of motion or no motion is made.

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Pasadena, CA, United States of America

John Edward Tanner