[vardump]

Ohh... This is embarrassing! I work in embedded/low level and I have always thought that gate == transistor. It's really obvious in retrospect...

I stand corrected.

[marshray]

It's not a crazy idea, there are indeed logic types that implement some gate types with a single transistor. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistor–transistor_logic

These were more commonly used back when transistors were expensive.