If you've been following statistics about the Internet of Things (IoT), which is growing by billions of devices every year, the numbers are pretty mind-boggling. But the truth is that expensive silicon chips are actually holding this rampant growth back.
But now researchers have designed a new plastic processor, which they estimate will be able to be mass-produced for less than a penny. That's right — the new Flexicore chips could kick-start a world in which everything — from bandages to bananas — could have a chip, according to a report by IEEE Spectrum.
The chip designs we currently use — even for the most basic microcontrollers — are too complex to be mass-produced in plastic: You surely won't see a plastic processor on our list of best CPUs for gaming. [...]
To address the peculiarities of plastic chip design, the University of Illinois team built the new Flexicore processor design from scratch. Because yields dive when processor gate count rise, they decided to make a minimal design that reduced the gate count and used 4-bit and 8-bit logic instead of 16-bit or 32-bit alternatives. [...]
A sample 4-bit FlexiCore processor is 5.6mm square and contains 2,104 semiconductor devices, similar to a classic Intel 4004 CPU. [...]
With this sub-penny plastic processor, and the move of flexible electronics from niche to mainstream, we may be seeing the dawn of truly ubiquitous electronics. The above research is going to be presented at the International Symposium on Computer Architecture later this month, so we should learn more about it and further development plans soon.
We speed headlong into our (dystopian?) IoT future.
See also: The First High-Yield, Sub-Penny Plastic Processor
(Score: 4, Insightful) by drussell on Friday June 17 2022, @11:31PM (4 children)
How would this "plastic "processor be a better idea than an off-the-shelf $0.03 Padauk microcontroller?
https://youtu.be/VYhAGnsnO7w [youtu.be]
EEVblog #1132 - The 3 Cent Microcontroller!
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2022, @01:16AM
Looks like Padauk is not immune from the worldwide semiconductor shortage, the Padauk is now 5¢ on LCSC [lcsc.com]. Gotta break the bank now!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Saturday June 18 2022, @01:33AM (2 children)
Off the cuff?
Flexibility.
A much thinner profile for tiny/thin devices
And probably much lower capital costs for creating a production facility, allowing for less expensive customized versions.
And of course - price. At less than $0.01 there's doubtless a whole lot of potential applications where $0.03 is probably too expensive to justify. Just as there's far more applications for a $25 CPU than a $100 one. As stuff gets cheaper, the profit margins get tighter, and a $0.02 per unit difference could make a product dramatically more profitable.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2022, @02:20AM (1 child)
There is absolutely nothing in the article to suggest this could possibly be the case, so this is pure speculation.
It seems to me that using exotic semiconductor materials is just as likely to result in increased capital outlay rather than the opposite.
Yes, making things even cheaper will open up new applications. But I'll believe a $0.01 price point when you can actually buy them at that price point. Right now the $0.01 processor does not actually exist. You can buy the
$0.03$0.05 Padauk right now.(Score: 3, Touché) by sgleysti on Saturday June 18 2022, @03:50PM
All of this info is available at the fab's website: https://www.pragmaticsemi.com/ [pragmaticsemi.com]
Production facility capital costs are lower, processing time is lower, and startup cost for a design is lower, compared to Silicon.