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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: 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.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(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 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday July 22 2021, @07:43PM
I was specifically thinking of NON IoT applications because of the severe limitations.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(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