To judge the Fairchild Micrologic series by modern performance metrics is to miss the point entirely. It is like criticizing the Wright Flyer for lacking in-flight Wi-Fi.
The first Micrologic chips were sold for (over $1,000 today). Engineers joked that they were “gold-plated,” but the military paid because they replaced a $500 board of discrete components. Within three years, the price dropped to $2–$5 per chip . fairchild micrologic
The most famous application of Fairchild Micrologic was in the . Because weight and power consumption were critical for the lunar mission, NASA chose Micrologic for its high reliability and compact form factor. To judge the Fairchild Micrologic series by modern
| 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 | Engineers joked that they were “gold-plated,” but the
