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PlasticArm is a functional, non-silicon, flexible Cortex-M0 microcontroller
Four years ago, we wrote about PragmatIC's ultrathin and flexible plastic electronics circuit, with news that an ultra-cheap ARM Cortex M0 MCU made of plastic materials was coming soon.
In this case, "soon" means about four years, but Arm has now finally announced PlasticArm, an ultra-minimalist, fully functional Cortex-M0-based SoC, with 128 bytes of RAM and 456 bytes of ROM that, with 18,000 gates, is twelve times more complex than previous state-of-the-art flexible electronics.
[...] There are two main advantages of PlasticArm. First, It's flexible and integrated into paper, plastic, or metal foil substrates. It's also much cheaper to mass-produce with Arm saying it would cost less than 1/10th the cost of silicon in 2017. That means ultra-low-cost PlasticArm microcontrollers would become commercially viable in new use cases include flexible smart sensors, smart labels, and intelligent packaging. Arm especially sees great potential in the healthcare sector and for the reduction of food waste.
[...] It's also really slow at this time, as the paper reads PlasticARM is fully functional up to 29 kHz at 3V and 40 kHz at 4.5V.
We probably still have a few years before flexible Arm microcontrollers become available as more research is needed to lower power consumption and improve the solution as a whole.
Coming soon to a stamp near you?
Journal Reference:
John Biggs, James Myers, Jedrzej Kufel, et al. A natively flexible 32-bit Arm microprocessor [open], Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03625-w)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 22 2021, @01:47PM (12 children)
Can you even fit a hello world?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 22 2021, @02:05PM
You can fit a lot into a small space.
https://youtu.be/1UzTf0Qo37A [youtu.be]
The real question is how much power these consume. They're going to have to operate in environments where they pull power from stray radio waves. The high voltage required isn't necessarily a showstopper, but it's not a good sign
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 22 2021, @02:09PM
>> Can you even fit a hello world?
Yes, as long as it isn't written in Rust.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Opportunist on Thursday July 22 2021, @02:42PM
Assuming that it's using the 16bit mode, you probably have room for about 200 assembler instructions. That may not sound like a lot, but it is actually surprisingly much if you know what you're doing.
I know it's gone out of fashion to actually be frugal with the resources you have because we're used to just slapping on another 16 gigs if we run out of space, but the ancients here will probably remember a time when knowing how to cut 2 instructions from a code made or broke the projects.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday July 22 2021, @03:08PM (2 children)
In 1975, the original Altair 8800 came with only 256 bytes. You had to buy memory expansion boards if you wanted to upgrade to, say 1 K. Or 2K, 4K, or OMG!!! 16 K bytes!
The thing about landline phones is that they never get lost. No air tag necessary.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by FatPhil on Thursday July 22 2021, @03:51PM (1 child)
However, what's done is done - let the 456+256B demo comps begin!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 23 2021, @06:41PM
A PIC12 could fit 304 instructions in that much ROM and I don't think the transistor count would be any higher. I have a sneaking suspicion that the reason they didn't test bending the chip while running is that it crashes when you do that.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday July 22 2021, @03:22PM (5 children)
You might be able to build a 4 function calculator in 456 bytes of ROM and 128 bytes of RAM.
Maybe also: A TV remote. A digital thermometer. Thermostat. In-junction-box light switch. Electric power usage meter. Bomb timer with 7-seg LED readout.
The thing about landline phones is that they never get lost. No air tag necessary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 22 2021, @04:21PM (3 children)
Those are mostly IOT applications and 456 bytes of ROM simply isn't enough for the telemetry code, let alone the unprotected internet-facing server.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 22 2021, @07:10PM (1 child)
So they're not going to ARM bears?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday July 23 2021, @12:39AM
They already have plastic guns, plastic bears but they don't yet have plastic rights. So, no, they're not going to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday July 22 2021, @07:43PM
I was specifically thinking of NON IoT applications because of the severe limitations.
The thing about landline phones is that they never get lost. No air tag necessary.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Thursday July 22 2021, @05:39PM
But, but, but, but, what about the terabytes of advertising? How do you let users do retarded shit with it from their cell phones? How can it zucker up user's private data? And how are you supposed to hold users hostage until they cough up shitcoin? If it can't be used to create seizure inducing animations and sell cell phones, then it obviously isn't good for anything! :P