The Dynamics of Digital Excitation, 1998

The electronic circuit is a proud child of twentieth century natural science. In a hundred short years it has developed to the point that it now enhances nearly every aspect of human life. Yet our basic understanding of electronic-circuit operation, electronic -circuittheory, has not made significant progress during the semiconductor industry's explosive growth from 1950s to the present. This is because the electronic circuit has never been considered to be a challenging research subject by physi­ cists. Linear passive circuit theory was established by the late 1940s. After the advent of the semiconductor electron devices, the interest of the technical community shifted away from circuit theory. Twenty years later, when integrated circuit technology began an explosive growth, cir­ cuit theory was again left behind in the shadow of rapidly progressing computer-aided design (CAD) technology. The present majority view is that electronic-circuit theory stands in a subordinate position to CAD and to device-processing technology. In 1950s and 1960s, several new semiconductor devices were invented every year, and each new device seemed to have some interesting funda­ mental physical mechanisms that appeared worth investigating. Com­ pared to attractive device physics, the problems of the semiconductor device circuit appeared less sophisticated and less attractive. Bright minds of the time drifted away from circuit theory to electron-device physics. After thirty years only one type of semiconductor device, the electron triode with several variations survived, whereas hundreds of them went into oblivion.

1 Propagation of Digital Excitation in the Gate Field.- 1.01 Introduction.- 1.02 Examples of the Gate Field.- 1.03 The Vector Gate Field.- 1.04 Energy Transfer in Gate Field.- 1.05 CMOS Inverter Switching Process.- 1.06 The Velocity of the Propagation of Excitation.- 1.07 An Equation of the Motion of Excitation.- 1.08 Node Waveform of Logic Circuits.- 1.09 Logic Threshold Voltage and Gate Delay Time.- 1.10 Nonmonotonous Node-Switching Voltage Waveforms.- 1.11 The Strange Consequences of the Classical Delay-Time Definition.- 1.12 The Phase Transition of the Gate Field.- 1.13 The Miller Effect in the Gate Field.- 1.14 Feedforward Excitation Transmission.- 1.15 The Gate Field of a Negative-Resistance Diode.- 2 Quantum Mechanics of Digital Excitation.- 2.01 Introduction.- 2.02 Elementary and Composite Excitation.- 2.03 Finite and Infinite Energy Associated with Excitation.- 2.04 An Eigenvalue Problem in the Gate Field.- 2.05 The Eigensolution of a Gate-Field Waveform.- 2.06 Gate-Field Variable Measurements.- 2.07 Latch Circuit for Boolean-Level Determination.- 2.08 The Decision Threshold.- 2.09 The Probabilistic Interpretation of Boolean Level.- 2.10 Metastability in Observation.- 2.11 Propagation of Excitation through a Nonuniform Field.- 2.12 The Tunnel Effect of Digital Excitation.- 2.13 Ambiguity in the Cause and Effect Relationship.- 2.14 Valid Delay-Time Measurement of the Digital Circuit.- 2.15 The Quantum-Mechanical Delay Definition.- 2.16 Design Guidelines for Ultrafast Circuits.- 2.17 Natural Decay of Composite Excitation.- 2.18 A Theory of the Decay of Isolated Pulses.- 2.19 Mass of Digital Excitation.- 2.20 The Dynamics of Digital Excitation in Closed Path.- 3 The Macrodynamics of Digital Excitation.- 3.01 Introduction.- 3.02 Quantum States.- 3.03 Bohr’sCorrespondence Principle.- 3.04 States of Nodes and Circuits.- 3.05 The Capability of a Circuit to Store Information.- 3.06 Information Stored in a Ring.- 3.07 Extraction of the Features of Data Pattern.- 3.08 Digital Excitation in a Closed Path.- 3.09 Multiple Ringoscillators.- 3.10 A General Observation of Ringoscillator Dynamics.- 3.11 Modes of Oscillation.- 3.12 A State-Space Representation of Ringoscillator.- 3.13 The Practical Significance of Ringoscillator Logic.- 3.14 An Asynchronous Multiloop Ringoscillator.- 3.15 The Precision of an FET Model and Simulator.- 3.16 Conclusion.- 3.17 The Future Direction of Digital-Circuit Research.

This book provides a fundamental new viewpoint on circuit therapy. It begins with a very real and practical problem and then presents arguments that are set forth for the first time. The most commonly used parameter of digital circuits, the gate delay time, does not exist. This problem emerges most clearly in the high-speed CMOS, above 1 GHz clock frequency. This book explains why that is so and then how to deal with the situation in a practical manner.