ABSTRACT
The most compelling attribute, by far, of silicon (Si) lies in the economy-of-scale it facilitates, culminating in the modern integrated circuits (IC) fabrication facility, effectively enabling the production of gazillions of low-cost, very highly integrated, remarkably powerful ICs, each containing millions of transistors. The global communications landscape is exceptionally diverse, ranging from low-frequency wireless to the fastest high-speed wireline systems. As wonderful as Si is from a fabrication viewpoint, from a device or circuit designer’s perspective, it is hardly the ideal semiconductor. The communications revolution can be functionally defined and characterized by the pervasive acquisition, manipulation, storage, transformation, and transmission of “information” on a global scale. In the electronics domain, the fruit of that global effort is silicon–germanium heterojunction bipolar transistor bipolar complementary metal oxide semiconductor technology, and is in commercial manufacturing worldwide and is rapidly finding a number of important circuit and system applications.
