Computing · 1963

CMOS

Paired transistors that draw power only when switching.

Frank Wanlass and Chih-Tang Sah at Fairchild combined n-type and p-type MOSFETs so almost no current flows at rest. CMOS's low power made battery devices and billion-transistor chips practical.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 1

MOSFET 1959

What it led to 3

Pure-play foundry (TSMC) 1987
GPU (GeForce 256) 1999
High-k metal gate 2007

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Transistors per microprocessor Latest: 58.2B transistors (2021) Source: Our World in Data

Computation per constant dollar, 1850-2006 Latest: 7.3B million units of computer power per 2006 $ (2003) Source: Nordhaus 2007, Two Centuries of Productivity Growth in Computing, J. Econ. Hist. 67(1), Table 6