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PlasticArm: Flexible 32-bit Arm Cortex-M0 Microprocessor Produced

posted by martyb on Thursday July 22 2021, @01:30PM   

takyon writes:

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)

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Original Submission

• Re:456 bytes? Re:456 bytes? (Score: 5, Interesting) by FatPhil on Thursday July 22 2021, @03:51PM (1 child)

  by FatPhil (863) <{pc-soylent} {at} {asdf.fi}> on Thursday July 22 2021, @03:51PM (#1159133) Homepage

  It does seem like it's aimed at the microcontroller market, where one simple program with a tiny footprint is run forever. That's what the commercial users want. But it's terribly boring. That processor has more CPU than a ZX Spectrum or a BBC Model B, for pity's sake, it's a shame not to be able to make use of it. Being a generalised CPU core was clearly overkill, there were dumber designs that they could have used if all they were going to do was microcontroller-type trivialities.
  
  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

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• Re:456 bytes? (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 23 2021, @06:41PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 23 2021, @06:41PM (#1159449)

  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.

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