News Plastic Processors for Less Than a Penny Apiece

[Admin]

Yields of newly-designed Flexicore processor, which packs about the same number of transistors as the iconic Intel 4004, were over 80%.

Plastic Processors for Less Than a Penny Apiece : Read more

 

[artk2219]

Super neat, it should allow for some great tracking metrics on all sorts of things, you could drive tons of sensors for just about anything. Of course there are some huge tracking implications, but frankly those currently exist anyway with a regular mobile phone. Now how can we mod them to run classic games .

 

[Neilbob]

I hope it's never more than niche, because making use of even more plastic seems like a great idea.

I went all eco there for a moment.

 

[hotaru.hino]

I hope it's never more than niche, because making use of even more plastic seems like a great idea.

I went all eco there for a moment.

But what's the alternative? Semiconductor IC manufacturing isn't exactly environmentally friendly either. And plastic will be used anyway for the chip carrier.

 

[TheOtherOne]

As long as these can be produced with "proper" recycling methods, not the complete BS that most of the countries have now, it's a great idea!

 

[edzieba]

Compare and contrast the "3 cent micro": more expensive than the projected price, but available today at retail, and orders of magnitude more capable in performance (and with more compatibility than rewriting your software for a 4-bit system).

Packaging would also be a problem: this design seems to be targeted at fabbing an array of identical chips to be diced and packaged like silicon-substrate ICs are. That kills the flexibility advantage of the plastic substrate unless you develop a brand new flexible packaging methodology, as well as bonding a flexible package to a flexible substrate without introducing failure points (more difficult than it sounds). On the flipside, if you fab the entire circuit (not just the IC, but sensors and passives too) on a monolithic piece of plastic you have a entirely flexible device, but you are now effectively fabbing a chip of several hundred to several thousand of square mm 'die' area, and your cost advantage vanishes out the window again.

 

[LuxZg]

Compare and contrast the "3 cent micro": more expensive than the projected price, but available today at retail

My first thought was - how much would such 4-bit processor cost on silicon? I mean sure, 1c is cheap, but it is also very limited design.

Does anyone have projected prices for IDK, 10nm? I found some data saying that 1.2 trillion are on that "wafer chip" at 7nm and 8.5 inch size, but wafer is almost 12 inch. Well chip is probably square so that's about right. And price per wafer is 9k something, so let's say it was 12.000$ after all the waves of peice increases. So multiply that with 5000 transistors that this flexi chip claims and you end up with 0.00005 $ price. That's way cheaper than a cent. Other view would be that silicon chip with 1 million transistors would be 1 cent on TSMC 7nm, and Pentium Pro of 1995 had 5.5 million and ran at 200MHz.

Now, I'd rather pay 5-6 cents for x86 chip like Pentium Pro that can probably run at 4-5 GHz then this Flexi thing. If we ran Windows 95 on these chips (at 200MHz), imagine how it would run something like Debian at 4GHz.

Now I want a 5 cent Pentium ;D

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

Instead of thinking about new products, think about all the existing products which could be made more environmentally friendly, especially if these were made out of biodegradable plastic. Drug tests, pregnancy tests, things which are already using traditional silicon chips, require very little processing power, and are disposed of after one use.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

How much useful computing will you get out of 4-bit or 8-bit micro controllers?

I thought the most useful modern micro controllers would have at least 16-bit's, but going backwards to 4-bit or 8-bit?

Is that necessary or useful? Or are they making e-waste by making so many cheapo controllers with limited processing capability.

 

[criticaloftom]

Perhaps before we make a banana sticker that can use our temperature to tell us our mood, current blood sugar level & radio our metrics back to base to recommend other purchases; we should step back and think about how far into our lives we want technology to encroach for no good or valid cause.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Perhaps before we make a banana sticker that can use our temperature to tell us our mood, current blood sugar level & radio our metrics back to base to recommend other purchases; we should step back and think about how far into our lives we want technology to encroach for no good or valid cause.

Seconded. But I sure would like the blood sugar testing. My fingers have been ruined by poking 10-20 times a day for 40 yrs

if you don’t check often you can’t achieve 5-6 A1C levels like me

 

[Blitz Hacker]

I hope it's never more than niche, because making use of even more plastic seems like a great idea.

I went all eco there for a moment.

Bio-degradable processors? Tech would be all in.. Sell you something that bio degrades in 2 years lol

 

[digitalgriffin]

I'm trying to figure out the use. 4 Bit processors are incredibly limited in functionality. Even the first home computers from the 70's and 80's were 8 bits. And there are no compilers for 4 bit that I know of. You would have to go straight assembler.

 

[digitalgriffin]

Seconded. But I sure would like the blood sugar testing. My fingers have been ruined by poking 10-20 times a day for 40 yrs

if you don’t check often you can’t achieve 5-6 A1C levels like me

Diabetes is always one of those things that makes me cringe. I hate needles.

They have ones you can wear now that don't poke you. What about digital insulin pumps? Are these not viable alternatives for you?

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Diabetes is always one of those things that makes me cringe. I hate needles.

They have ones you can wear now that don't poke you. What about digital insulin pumps? Are these not viable alternatives for you?

I use a pump and that’s how I can get my A1c so low but I have to check my blood sugars a lot so I know what to do. I tried to get the ones you can wear on your arm but for some reason they couldn’t keep up with demand so I don’t get them

for diabetics A1c of 7.0 is considered excellent. Mine is usually between 5.0 and 6.0. It can be done

 

[hotaru.hino]

I'm trying to figure out the use. 4 Bit processors are incredibly limited in functionality. Even the first home computers from the 70's and 80's were 8 bits. And there are no compilers for 4 bit that I know of. You would have to go straight assembler.

I'm sure someone at some point made a compiler for something like the 4004. It wouldn't be that hard anyway. But you'd be surprised how many things use incredibly simple processors, such as the PIC12. The thing only has 8 pins and the one time I remember using it, it was to implement a PWM fan controller using a thermistor to adjust the fan speed according to the temperature of some load.