ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 14 -- United States Patent no. 12,683,388, issued on July 14, was assigned to Socionext Inc. (Kanagawa, Japan).
"Semiconductor integrated circuit device" was invented by Hidetoshi Tanaka (Yokohama, Japan) and Yuko Nagai (Yokohama, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An IO cell includes an output circuit having an ESD protection diode, a protective resistance, and an output transistor. The protective resistance is constituted by a plurality of resistor elements formed in a first interconnect layer that is formed in an interconnect process (back end of line (BEOL)). The resistor elements are connected to interconnects formed in a second interconnect layer through vias. In...