[HN Gopher] The first fully functional non-silicon ARM Processor...
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       The first fully functional non-silicon ARM Processor, PlasticArm
        
       Author : ksec
       Score  : 22 points
       Date   : 2021-07-21 19:06 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (twitter.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
        
       | dmitrygr wrote:
       | @dang. The real link is not twitter but this:
       | https://community.arm.com/developer/research/b/articles/post...
       | 
       | There is also the official paper in Nature, here:
       | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03625-w
        
         | ksec wrote:
         | Oh Thank You. I think the paper in Nature is much better. Would
         | be nice if Dang could change it.
        
       | dmitrygr wrote:
       | 128 bytes of RAM and 456 bytes of ROM. Looking at the paper, we
       | see that 64 bytes of ram are used for the register file, and the
       | clock speed is 29KHz.
       | 
       | I've written and shipped useful code in much less. This might
       | already have applications!
       | 
       | That being said, consuming 21mW at 29KHz is a bit much. Generally
       | power will scale superlinearly with speed, so it will not take
       | much more speed for this thing to melt itself.
       | 
       | Still, a cool demo
        
         | jleahy wrote:
         | It's all static power, not dynamic power, so clock speed is
         | irrelevant. Still it's an NMOS technology rather than CMOS and
         | that is going to mean big issues for power consumption (there
         | is a reason why CMOS won).
        
           | dmitrygr wrote:
           | By definition it cannot be ALL static power :) Physics
           | applies. Moving a wire from a high to a low and back will
           | incur losses. They claim 99% static. Then, assuming just
           | linear scaling, taking this to 64MHz would be (21 * .01 / 29
           | * 64000 + 21 * .99) = 484mW . Half a watt is a bit much for a
           | 64MHz micro. But still a cool start
        
       | ksec wrote:
       | This is big, _very_ big. Completely blows up lots of assumption I
       | have in tech along with cost model.
       | 
       | >Although PlasticArm is an ultra-minimalist Cortex-M0-based SoC,
       | with just 128 bytes of RAM and 456 bytes of ROM - it is twelve
       | times more complex than the previous state-of-the-art flexible
       | electronics!
       | 
       | There are lots of folks on HN working on embedded systems. I am
       | wonder what are their thoughts on it?
        
         | [deleted]
        
           | kazinator wrote:
           | OK, now when we say "shipped", we're talking:
           | 
           | https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=paper+boat&iax=images&ia=im.
           | ..
        
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       (page generated 2021-07-21 23:02 UTC)