CMOS - Technical Details

Technical Details

"CMOS" refers to both a particular style of digital circuitry design, and the family of processes used to implement that circuitry on integrated circuits (chips). CMOS circuitry dissipates less power than logic families with resistive loads. Since this advantage has increased and grown more important, CMOS processes and variants have come to dominate, thus the vast majority of modern integrated circuit manufacturing is on CMOS processes. As of 2010, CPUs with the best performance per watt each year have been CMOS static logic since 1976.

CMOS circuits use a combination of p-channel and n-channel metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) to implement logic gates. Although CMOS logic can be implemented with discrete devices for demonstrations, commercial CMOS products are integrated circuits composed of up to millions of transistors of both types on a rectangular piece of silicon of between 10 and 400mm2.