Compare Experimental Mos Static Power Against Bipolar Standby Power

# Compare Experimental MOS Static Power Against Bipolar Standby Power

## 1. Why Static Power, Not Switching Power, Was MOS's Clearest Measured Advantage

Measuring a PMOS gate and a comparable RTL/DTL gate both held in a steady, unswitching logic state shows the MOS gate drawing current limited essentially to leakage through its off-state transistors, while the bipolar gate continues drawing its full resistive standing current regardless of switching activity — the one comparison from this era where MOS's advantage is not qualified by era-specific caveats about mobility, delay, or manufacturability, because it follows directly from the structural difference Step 1 identified at the very start of this series. The measured static-power ratio:

## 2. Real Diagram: Why This Advantage Still Did Not Decide 1962-1965's Market

Static power dominated systems that spent most of their time holding a state rather than switching rapidly — memory and shift-register functions, exactly RCA's own first demonstration from Step 6 — but systems built around continuous high-speed switching (fast counters, arithmetic logic) still spent most of their energy budget on switching activity, where Step 7's earlier, less one-sided comparison applied instead.

## 3. Why This Advantage Still Did Not Decide 1962-1965's Market

This workload-dependence is why experimental MOS's earliest commercial footholds, once it reached production later in the decade, concentrated specifically in memory and shift-register applications before spreading into general logic — a pattern this step's measurement directly predicts, rather than a historical coincidence.