Mixed-signal integrated circuit
For example, an efficient mixed-signal IC may have its digital and analog components share a common power supply.
However, analog and digital components have very different power needs and consumption characteristics, which makes this a non-trivial goal in chip design.
Instead, they need more mature models of active and passive elements for more accurate simulations and verification, such as for testability planning and reliability estimations.
There are numerous applications of mixed-signal integrated circuits, such as in mobile phones, modern radio and telecommunication systems, sensor systems with on-chip standardized digital interfaces (including I2C, UART, SPI, or CAN), voice-related signal processing, aerospace and space electronics, the Internet of things (IoT), unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and automotive and other electrical vehicles.
Mixed-signal circuits or systems are typically cost-effective solutions, such as for building modern consumer electronics and in industrial, medical, measurement, and space applications.
Typically, mixed-signal chips perform some whole function or sub-function in a larger assembly, such as the radio subsystem of a cell phone, or the read data path and laser SLED control logic of a DVD player.
[note 1] In these, the same chip that handles digital logic may contain mixed-signal structures like analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converter(s), operational amplifiers, or wireless connectivity blocks.
[9][10][11][12][13] Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby invention of the silicon integrated cicruit was enabled by the planar process developed by Jean Hoerni.
[14] In turn, Hoerni's planar process was inspired by the surface passivation method developed at Bell Labs by Carl Frosch and Lincoln Derick in 1955 and 1957.
[22][24] The silicon-gate CMOS (complementary MOS) PCM codec-filter chip, developed by Hodges and W.C. Black in 1980,[22] has since been the industry standard for digital telephony.
[26][22] While working at Bell Labs in the early 1980s, Pakistani engineer Asad Abidi worked on the development of sub-micron MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor) VLSI (very large-scale integration) technology at the Advanced LSI Development Lab, along with Marty Lepselter, George E. Smith, and Harry Bol.
Abidi's work was initially met with skepticism from proponents of gallium arsenide and bipolar junction transistors, the dominant technologies for high-speed circuits at the time.
In the mid-1990s, the RF CMOS technology that he pioneered was widely adopted in wireless networking, as mobile phones began entering widespread use.
