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Is BiCMOS radical woke? :-) Author here for your Premium questions...

• smegsicle 2y ago
  whats that supposed to be some kind of sick joke?
  • kens 2y ago
    No. I'm making fun of the comments on my previous article that called me "radical woke."
    • java-man 2y ago
      Oh please, we are all a bit sensitive right now. We always enjoy reading your articles, Ken!
• hulitu 2y ago
  BiCMOS was supposed to be faster than CMOS. Whas this the case with this processor ?
  • kens 2y ago
    Intel said that BiCMOS decreased signal delays by up to 35%, although the total performance improvement would be less.
• chasil 2y ago
  What areas still use bipolar? Does a switching power supply use substantial bipolar? Does anybody still implement TTL or ECL? Quoting you below... "The most unusual circuit is the BiCMOS driver. By adding a few extra processing steps to the regular CMOS manufacturing process, bipolar (NPN and PNP) transistors can be created. The Pentium extensively used BiCMOS circuits since they reduced signal delays by up to 35%. Intel also used BiCMOS for the Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, and Xeon processors. However, as chip voltages dropped, the benefit from bipolar transistors dropped too and BiCMOS was eventually abandoned." I didn't realize that BiCMOS lasted so long. I thought it was only used on the original Pentium, but I really didn't look hard. Edit: BiCMOS has a wiki. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BiCMOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BiCMOS
  • RicoElectrico 2y ago
    I think the best keyword to seek is BCD (Bipolar, CMOS, DMOS) which is a process pioneered by ST. It is quite alive indeed. Bipolar has for example lower noise than CMOS when it comes to opamps.
    • qwezxcrty 2y ago
      Lower noise for lower source impedances, to be slightly more precise.