1. CMOS technology and circuits

Since CMOS technology has become the dominant integrated circuit technology since the 1980s, we begin by presenting its essential characteristics. They will enable us to :

• show how inverters, NAND gates, NOR gates and some gates implementing more complex logic functions can be realized by modeling the operation of MOS transistors as switches;

• explain the problems, particularly in terms of power dissipation and energy consumption, encountered in state-of-the-art CMOS technologies.