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IBM's Tiny Computer for Anti-Counterfeiting

posted by mrpg on Tuesday March 20 2018, @12:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the technology-is-getting-bigger-and-smaller dept.

takyon writes:

IBM has built a computer smaller than a grain of salt intended for anti-counterfeiting... and it uses a blockchain:

IBM has unveiled what it claims is the world's smallest computer—the size of a grain of salt. The computer will cost less than $0.10 to manufacture, and is intended for logistics applications.

The device is one type of what IBM calls "crypto-anchors"—"digital fingerprints" that can be embedded in everyday items in order to verify their provenance and contents. Another example of this concept is edible ink that can be stamped on pills.

The idea is to use these methods to link things to their records, which are stored on a blockchain.

The computer includes several hundred thousand transistors, static RAM, an LED and a photodetector for communication, and an integrated solar cell.

Also at Engadget, Notebookcheck, and CNET.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by c0lo on Tuesday March 20 2018, @03:00AM (3 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 20 2018, @03:00AM (#655246) Journal

    - can they run Linux?
    - Imagine a beowulf cluster of those

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
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  • (Score: 2) by pipedwho on Tuesday March 20 2018, @10:13AM

    by pipedwho (2032) on Tuesday March 20 2018, @10:13AM (#655315)

    Hot grits.

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Tuesday March 20 2018, @03:22PM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Tuesday March 20 2018, @03:22PM (#655410) Journal

    And of course:

    In Soviet Russia, blockchain uses you.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.

  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday March 20 2018, @09:41PM

    by VLM (445) on Tuesday March 20 2018, @09:41PM (#655640)

    Imagine a beowulf cluster of those

    Wouldn't work as well as you'd think

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercube_internetwork_topology [wikipedia.org]

    Really easy to build with ethernet or infiniband cables, but hard to build with physical grain of sand doing optical networking.

    It is a semi-serious problem.