While acousto-optic bulk or surface wave devices represent a radical change in system architecture to overcome the throughput limitations of conventional signal processor technology, GaAs IC's use the conven-tional digital or analog semiconductor processor architectures, achieving greatly improved throughputs by implementing these devices with a radically improved semiconductor. The superior electronic properties of GaAs, as compared with silicon, make possible the achievement of much higher performance levels in GaAs signal processing devices than have been demonstrated with silicon. Only recently, however, have advances in GaAs materials and processing technology made possible the fabrication of such devices as sub1100 ps propagation delay, high density planar GaAs integrated circuits with LS compatible power levels, and high speed (>0.5 GHz), high transfer efficiency GaAs charge coupled devices, 5 which should be capable of multi-gigahertz clocking rate operation. These high performance device technologies should have major impact on the high speed signal processing area, making possible, through their much higher speeds and lower power requirements, system approaches which could not be practically realized with existing silicon technology.

Date Published: 17 April 1980
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 0214, Acousto-Optic Bulk Wave Devices, (17 April 1980); doi: 10.1117/12.958404

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 0214:
Acousto-Optic Bulk Wave Devices
Joseph B. Houston Jr., Editor(s)