: The first device in the series, the "Type G" flip-flop, was released in March 1961. It contained four transistors and five resistors on a single chip.
| Feature | Micrologic (1961) | Modern 7nm CMOS | |------------------|-------------------|------------------| | Transistors/chip | 4–6 | 20+ billion | | Gate delay | 30 ns | < 0.01 ns | | Power/gate | 12 mW | < 0.01 mW | | Price/gate | ~$20 | < $0.0000001 |
When reviewing the Fairchild Micrologic series, one is not reviewing a mere set of electronic components; one is reviewing the dawn of the integrated circuit era. Before the Micrologic series, "computers" were massive assemblies of discrete transistors and hand-soldered connections. After the Micrologic series, the modern world began. fairchild micrologic
The Fairchild Micrologic family had several key features and advantages that made it widely popular:
These chips were revolutionary. They offered propagation delays in the tens of nanoseconds, which was blindingly fast compared to relay logic or hand-wired discrete cores. They consumed a fraction of the power and space of their predecessors. : The first device in the series, the
The story of Fairchild Micrologic is the defining chapter of the silicon revolution, where a small team of "traitorous" engineers turned a laboratory theory into the microchips that eventually guided humans to the Moon. The "Traitorous Eight" and the Planar Breakthrough The story begins in 1957, when eight young scientists—including Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore —defected from Shockley Semiconductor to form Fairchild Semiconductor . Their mission was to solve the "reliability problem" of early transistors, which were prone to failure from dust and exposure. In 1959, Jean Hoerni invented the Planar Process , which protected delicate silicon junctions under a layer of glass (silicon dioxide). Seeing this, Robert Noyce realized they could do more than just make better transistors—they could interconnect multiple components directly on a single silicon wafer using deposited metal lines. Making it "Micro" 11 sites A Company of Legend: The Legacy of Fairchild Semiconductor * Fairchild overview. Founded in September 1957 in Palo Alto, California, by eight young engineers and scientists from Shockley Se... IEEE Computer Society Building the Future: The Planar Integrated Circuit Jun 8, 2009 —
The Fairchild Micrologic family played a significant role in the development of digital electronics and computing. The family influenced the development of later IC families, such as the TTL (Transistor-Transistor Logic) and CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor) families. The Micrologic family also helped establish Fairchild Semiconductor as a leading player in the IC industry, paving the way for the company's future innovations and successes. They offered propagation delays in the tens of
: High-end computer manufacturers like Burroughs and IBM also utilized Micrologic to shrink the size of their processors while increasing computational speed. Historical Legacy