What' so great about CMOS?

Question

I've read lot of topics here , I read some people saying I prefer to "have CMOS characteristics " & so on , Also in some data sheets (like AVR ) , they say it have CMOS characteristics .... etc I remember once "CMOS compatible " word ?

So why having "CMOS characteristics" makes people proud ?

Answer 1

CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) logic has number of desirable characteristics:

1. High imput impedance. The input signal is driving electrodes with a layer of insulation (the metal oxide) between them and what they are controlling. This gives them a small amount of capacitance, but virtually infinite resistance. The current into or out of a CMOS input held at one level is just leakage, usually 1 µA or less.

2. The outputs actively drive both ways.

3. The outputs are pretty much rail-to-rail.

4. CMOS logic takes very little power when held in a fixed state. The current consumption comes from switching as those capacitors are charged and discharged. Even then, it has good speed to power ratio compared to other logic types.

5. CMOS gates are very simple. The basic gate is a inverter, which is only two transistors. This together with the low power consumption means it lends itself well to dense itegration. Or conversely, you get a lot of logic for the size, cost, and power.

Answer 2

It refers to how the gates are constructed on the IC. CMOS stands for Complementary MOS (metal oxide semiconductor), which uses uses both PMOS and NMOS (i.e. complementary) to construct the logic.
CMOS is fast, has a large fan out and uses less power than other technologies.

Other families are TTL (transistor-transistor logic, NPN/PNP still used), ECL (emitter coupled logic - fast but consumes a lot power - still used in varying forms) DTL (diode transistor logic - old), and RTL (resistor transistor logic (older)

"CMOS compatible" or "TTL compatible" is used frequently to describe the voltage levels required for logic 1 and 0.

Answer 3

If you know the alternatives that were there before there was CMOS or before CMOS was fast enough to compete you would understand that it is a great technology.

The alternatives were TTL, LS-TTL, P- or NMOS.

Without the low power consumption of CMOS technology none of the current microprossessors were even close to practical usable.

Todays CMOS microprocessors have a power density (power dissipation per chip area) which is similar to that of a cooking plate. Imagine the power density of alternative technologies would be 100 or 1000 times higher.

Answer 4

Why CMOS?

First I would explain why CMOS exists; Oli[n] - :) - have said the advantages, but let me take a step back.

The need for complementary gates is due to the fact that the simpler gate concept is based on the concept of pull-up and pull-down; this means that there is a device (a transistor or a set of transistors) which pulls the ouput high and another device to pull it down.

The enhancement nMOS, which is the best performing MOSFET, needs a \$V_{GS}>V_T>0.7V\$ in order to work; for this reason, it works well as a pull down device, but not so well as a pull up. Hence the idea to use the pMOS, that is a bit worse (because holes move slower than electrons, but this is another story) but acts perfectly as a pull up.

So complementary because you use two device that behave in the opposite way and are thus complementary. Then, the logic is inverting because nMOS (that pulls down) requires a high voltage to switch on and pMOS requires a low voltage.

But why MOS is good?

And some additional informations: as also Olin said, the main reason for the spreading of MOSFET technology is that it is a planar device, that means that is suitable to be made on the surface of a semiconductor.

This is because, as you can see in the picture, building a MOSFET (this is a n-channel, the p-channel in the same substrate requires an additional doped region called n-well) basically consists in doping the two n+ regions and deposing the gate and the contacts (very very simplified).

BJT transistors now are made also in MOS-like technology, so printed in a surface, but basically they consist in three layers of semiconductor differently doped, so they are primarily meant for discrete technology. In fact, the way they are now built is creating these three layers at different deepness in the silicon, and (just to give an idea), in recent technology they occupy an area in the squared micrometer order or so, while MOS transistors can be built in <20 nm technology, with an overall area that can be in the order of about 100 nm². (picture in the right)

So you can see that, added to the other properties, MOSFET transistor is buch better suited (in thoday's technology) to achieve Very Large Scale Integration, or VLSI.

Anyway, bipolar transistor are still widely used in analog electronics, for their better linearity properties. As a side note, a BJT is faster than a MOSFET built with the same technology (meant as transistor dimensions).

CMOS vs MOS

Note that CMOS is not equivalent to MOS: since the C is for 'Complementary', it's a particular (even if widely used) configuration for MOS gates, while high speed circuits often use dynamic logic, that aims basically to reduce input capacitance of gates. In fact, trying to push the technology to the limit, having two gate capacitances (as CMOS have) at the input is a source of loss of performance. You could say that it's sufficient to increase the current delivered by the previous stage but, to make an example, 2x charging speed requires 2x charging current, that means 2x conductivity, which is achieved with 2x channel width, and - surprise - that doubles the capacity.

Also other topologies, like pass-transistor logic, can simplify the structure of certain gates.

About interfaces

Changing topic, when talking about microcontrollers and interfaces, it's important to remember that the high input impedance of CMOS gates makes very important to ensure that Input/Output pins are never left floating (if they have protection, this is ensured internally), as their gate can be exposed to external noise and assume unpredictable values. So stating that a device has CMOS characteristics should also advise you of this.

(It's a long answer, probably full of typos: feel free to edit it to correct it)

Answer 5

CMOS refers to a technology to create integrated circuits (so it doesn't apply to passive devices like resistors). Other technologies exist, like TTL and NMOS.

A big advantage of CMOS is that it uses less power than other technologies. CMOS designs has almost zero static power consumption. Only during transitions does CMOS use a non-negligible amount of power, but even then it's still extremely small as CMOS switches quickly, on the order of picoseconds for the fastest practical designs. (It's why microcontrollers consume more power at higher clock frequencies, as higher frequencies mean more frequent transitions.)

All that means less waste heat and more dense integrated circuits (i.e. smaller IC footprints for the same function). If your device runs on batteries most of the time, or must be as small as possible (e.g. smartphones), this is a huge win.

Answer 6

Just to add to what others have already answered, one of the reasons a chip-maker will advertise their part is CMOS-compatible, or has actual CMOS outputs, is that means that you can use their chip with all the other CMOS and CMOS-compatible chips.

For example, if you have a microcontroller or FPGA with CMOS I/O pins, then you can use it with CMOS glue logic chips, or a CMOS EEPROM, or a CMOS ADC. Having all these parts use a standardized interface means you (mostly) know you can hook them all up to each other, and they'll work.