They just don't make 'em like they used to: ARM announces plastic-based CPU

[BachChain]

Summary

 

As part of the next step in developing cheap and flexible electronics, ARM, the company most known for designing the processors that go into almost all mobile devices, has created a CPU that doesn't use silicon at all. Instead, the "PlasticARM" uses a polymer substrate with IGZO transistors. The architecture itself is based on the M0, ARM's lowest end design intended for extreme low power embedded uses.

 

Quotes

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'Plastic' or flexible electronics have been with us for a long while, and usually involve large yet simple designs for electronics flow, or basic 8-bit adders, all the way up to displays. What we're seeing now is something a little different - the key news as published today is that Arm, in association with PragmatIC, has produced a fully functional non-silicon version of one of Arm’s most popular microcontrollers, the M0.

Quote

PlasticArm, as it is now called, recreates the M0 core in a flexible plastic medium. This is important in two factors – first, the ability to enable processors or microcontrollers in something other than silicon will allow some amount of programmability in packaging, clothing, medical bandages, and others. Paired with a particle sensor, for example, it might allow for food packaging to determine when what is inside is no longer fit for human consumption due to spoilage or contamination. The second factor is cost, with flexible processing at scale being orders of magnitude cheaper than equivalent silicon designs.

Quote

A typical die size for a silicon Cortex M0 using TSMC’s 90nm process is 0.04 mm2, whereas PlasticArm is using an equivalent 800nm TFT process and the core size is 59.2 square millimeters (7.536 mm x 7.856 mm). This makes the Plastic M0 core about 1500x the size of a standard IoT implementation. The other big difference is in frequency – the research paper states that the Plastic M0 runs at around 20-29 kilohertz with a 3V input; an M0 on a 180nm Ultra-Low Leakage process optimized for power rather than frequency, in Arms own design documents, can run at 50 MHz. That’s a 1600-2500x difference in frequency.

My thoughts

While I'm sure this sort of thing will be very important for certain applications, I'm not looking forward to the "Internet of Everything" future that products like this are leading towards.

 

Sources

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16837/plasticarm-get-your-next-cpu-without-silicon

[Sauron]

I'm not sure plastic is a desirable alternative to silicon in the long term, I'd rather see some type of ceramic - but I like the idea. Still, if these are the performance levels we can expect then this will never see use outside of extremely simple devices.

[Murasaki]

I can see those in laptops, melt in seconds.

[Freakwise]

I read it right, right?

Quote

800nm

 

Sure it's marketed towards something like low power device such as IoT stuff or microcontroller but, oh boy it makes intel 14nm looks like alien technology

[Forbidden Wafer]

Just now, Freakwise said:

Sure it's marketed towards something like low power device such as IoT stuff or microcontroller but, oh boy it makes intel 14nm looks like alien technology

Just wait for the next generation of 800nm+++++++++++

[CarlBar]

2 minutes ago, Freakwise said:

I read it right, right?

 

Sure it's marketed towards something like low power device such as IoT stuff or microcontroller but, oh boy it makes intel 14nm looks like alien technology

 

Comparable in size at least to intels own original Pentium processors.

 

Going to be interesting to see what people can make this do.

[Curufinwe_wins]

25 minutes ago, Freakwise said:

I read it right, right?

 

Sure it's marketed towards something like low power device such as IoT stuff or microcontroller but, oh boy it makes intel 14nm looks like alien technology

800nm and 50kHz. Still that's more than enough for many basic applications.

 

[Dabombinable]

It'd probably withstand solar radiation well enough...depending on how strong the bonds are in the plastic.

[Doobeedoo]

Wood when.

[Zodiark1593]

1 hour ago, Dabombinable said:

It'd probably withstand solar radiation well enough...depending on how strong the bonds are in the plastic.

Digital, small form factor geiger counters?

[Bananasplit_00]

This is pretty cool tbh, with a core that large I'd want one as a keyring or something tbh

[CarlBar]

1 hour ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

This is pretty cool tbh, with a core that large I'd want one as a keyring or something tbh

 

7.5mmx7.5mm is a bit small for a keychanin TBH, (Thats about a quarter inch on each side in freedom units).

[Quackers101]

Metalized plastic? Liquid metal? Have your cpu running... I mean running out of your device by it melting.

[Amias]

6 hours ago, Sauron said:

I'm not sure plastic is a desirable alternative to silicon in the long term, I'd rather see some type of ceramic - but I like the idea. Still, if these are the performance levels we can expect then this will never see use outside of extremely simple devices.

It's not for processors. It's for making stupid things intelligent even cheaper.

[Dabombinable]

5 hours ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Digital, small form factor geiger counters?

I'm referring to reliability in space. For example 486 would suffer less damage and run with fewer errors than a 3700X due to space's radiation.

[Dash Lambda]

5 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

I'm referring to reliability in space. For example 486 would suffer less damage and run with fewer errors than a 3700X due to space's radiation.

We're actually not even sure how significant that is at the moment. A couple years ago there was an experiment going to determine the reliability of off-the-shelf computer hardware on the ISS, I don't think we've heard the results yet.

[CarlBar]

8 hours ago, Dash Lambda said:

We're actually not even sure how significant that is at the moment. A couple years ago there was an experiment going to determine the reliability of off-the-shelf computer hardware on the ISS, I don't think we've heard the results yet.

 

I'm not sure on that specific example but every similar example I've heard of involved wrapping off the shelf stuff in one hell of a lot of radiation shielding. We know not doing that causes serious issues with the hardware. Even the space hardened stuff develops faults over time. But finding a way to use regular stuff up there would significantly ease things, and raise the amount of processing power available.