Oki ASIC family targets mixed-voltage designs

Electronic News, Oct 31, 1994

SUNNYVALE, CALIF.--Oki Semiconductor this week will introduce its third-generation of 0.8-micron ASICs targeted at a wide range of 3-volt, 5V and mixed 3V/5V applications. The new design--available in a sea of gates (SOG) architecture or customer structured array (CSA)--features a universal I/O structure said to enable flexibility in mixed-voltage environments.

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The devices can be configured with either 3V or 5V cores interfaced to either voltage external designs. Both the sea of gates ASICs and the CSA-based devices are constructed with separate power buses for internal core logic and configurable I/O functions.

Oki's MSM38S sea of gates is available in seven sizes with up to 420 I/O pads and more than 135,000 usable gates, Oki said. Meanwhile, Oki's MSM98S mixed-voltage customer structured arrays, an all-mask-level superset of the SOG series, total 29 new device sizes.

Both the 38S and 98S are suited for PCMCIA and PCI interface applications, portable computers, high-performance desktop PCs and handheld instrumentation.

"While this sea of gates is a cost-effective solution for most pad-limited designs, the customer structured array is an ideal choice for core-limited applications with large or multiple memory functions, or any combination of the two," said Vince Liu, Oki's ASIC product marketing manager. "Instead of asking customers to reinvent the wheel each time they create a new masterslice like a standard cell, the MSM98S shortens design turnaround time by allowing designers to use the existing structure of any of its 29 pre-defined masterslices."

Customer modifications to the structure of any of the 29 predefined masterslices, rather than creation of a new masterslice every time, is designed to reduce the prototyping turnaround time over cell-based manufacturing techniques.

Both product families also use a three-layer-metal process 0.8-micron CMOS technology drawn from Oki's 16Mbit DRAM manufacturing process. They feature configurable I/Os that include single-pad PCI buffer and single-pad 24mA buffer.

The current product lineup is available in plastic QFP (quad flat pack) and TQFP (thin QFP) packages. Plastic BGA (ball grid array) packages are also available on request. Prototype delivery of MSM38S and MSM98S devices is scheduled by the end of the year, with production quantities slated for availability in 1Q95. Unit prices will vary with configuration, and NRE (non-recurring engineering) charges start at about $20,000.

The ASICs are supported by the company's proprietary MEMGEN tool which generates sea of gates memory for the 38S and appropriate memories for the 98S.