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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: 4, Interesting) by Dr Spin on Friday July 23 2021, @06:23AM (2 children)
If you want the least number of gates (and you WILL want to eliminate Bill), then the answer
is the PDP8 - about 1,000 gates. Its 12 bit, so 50% more throughput per instruction than 8 bits.
Instructions typically require 3 clock cycles (fetch-defer-execute). Separate I/O and memory
spaces mean slow peripherals don't slow the CPU, and choice of single cycle or three cycle DMA
means you can trade low thoughput for fewer gates but still have DMA if you want.
One legend was that Ken Olsen asked MIT do design the smallest collection of gates that could act
as a computer. Another was that the design was intended as a tool for testing the concept of
core memory. Alternatively Edson de Castro did it all.
There are only 8 instructions to learn which makes it dead easy to write assembler but hard to
write high level languages for. As others have said before me - if the amount of RAM is tiny, you
probably don't want a HLL any where near it.
Optically isolated RS232 should be easy. I am not sure how you can embed a paper tape reader
in cloth, I am sure someone will figure it out!
Far more appropriate for the task than Arm.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by agr on Friday July 23 2021, @09:37AM (1 child)
Not a crazy idea. With PDP-8 architecture, one could presumably have a lot more RAM and ROM. Applications requiring extremely cheap processors can amortize the cost of assembly language and there is a small C compiler available. One could envision paper certificates or plastic disks with a low value crypto currency coin embedded. Or event tickets that store a certain amount of credits. Skin patches that monitor UV exposure. Etc.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 23 2021, @03:51PM
I'd take a PDP-8 on those terms. Not fast, but very functional, decent throughput, a proven design, and one presumably could fit a FORTH interpreter on it with all the transistors saved by not implementing an ARM.