A One-Day Chip: An Innovative IC Construction Approach Using Electrically Reconfigurable Logic VLSI with On-Chip Programmable Interconnections

A new custom IC design methodology and the associated logic VLSI chip, which offer an ultimately fast turnaround-time logic IC construction method, are proposed. Using the new VLSI chip, digital system and logic designers can construct their own real IC chip with thousands of logic gates, as easily as if they drew logic diagrams to be implemented in the form of a printed-circuit board, which would utilize standard logic IC families. This construction can even be carried out in a second, because logic structures can be reconfigured electrically, due to on-chip programmable interconnection capability. This chip contains various kinds of logic functional blocks, such as inventers, NOR’s, NAND’s, flip-flops, shift registers, counters, adders, multiplexers, ALU’s, and so on. Up to 200 SSI/MSI standard logic blocks can be provided. The E^2 PROM-type MOSFET switch matrix is adjacent to the functional blocks, in order to connect any output to specific inputs of the functional blocks. It also offers a ready-to-test aid, obtained by monitoring the signal waveform developed inside the chip. These features have the advantage over the present custom IC design methods, such as gate array, standard cell, silicon compiler, or programmable logic array (PLA) approaches, in the sense that the designer can easily redesign the logic to obtain a digital system in an IC even within one day