Can't wait for the Arduino equivalent of one of these.
Michigan Micro Mote – World's Smallest Computer
31–40 of 57 posts
Re: Michigan Micro Mote – World's Smallest Computer
#32Very cool. The pessimist (realist?) in me can't avoid remembering Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky" novel, where the perfect surveillance device is a network of "dust computers".
I'm hugely impressed by this tech, and I can't wait to see what happens when these devices (or similar) can automatically become a dynamic cluster, but the term "smart dust" will almost certainly come back and bite these companies in the near future.
PR isn't my thing, but "smart dust" has a whole heap of potential negativity when said by the general media, or heard by the general populous. Just because phones, cars and cards can be "smart", most people want their dust to be dumb.
Re: Michigan Micro Mote – World's Smallest Computer
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
That may be so, but imagine when they get cheap enough that e.g. NSA installations must be kept at ridiculous cleanroom conditions because every speck of dust may be conducting counter-surveillance, or automatically dump footage onto Youtube.
Actually, you can see that scene in another brilliant SF novel: David Marusek's "Counting Heads" (even better that "A Deepness in the Sky" in my opinion)
Ehhh. Marusek makes several rather large conceptual leaps in order to make his plot hang together: notably, both human clones and intelligent machines have no civil rights, at all, to the point that either can be killed at the will of their owners.
Most ludicrously, there's no hint of political opposition or a protest movement. At no point does any character say anything like "Hey, wait, maybe clones are humans too?" or "Maybe sentient machines should have rights?"
Re: Michigan Micro Mote – World's Smallest Computer
#34I'm having troubles finding the actual spec (e.g. size of ram, rom etc). Anyone has more info about it?
From the pdf walterbell linked to,section "System Overview":
>...two ARM® Cortex-M0 processors are located in separate layers with different functionality as follows: >The DSP CPU efficiently handles data streaming from the imager (or other sensors), thus is built in 65nm CMOS (Layer 3) with a large 16kB non-retentive SRAM (NRSRAM). >The CTRL CPU manages the system using an always-on 3kB retentive SRAM (RSRAM) to maintain the stored operating program, and is built in low leakage 180nm CMOS.
For ROM, the CTRL CPU just always keeps its SRAM powered. I can't seem to find the CPU frequencies, but I would imagine they are very low, as a previous slightly larger version in 2010 had a Cortex M3 working at 1MHz max[1].
Re: Michigan Micro Mote – World's Smallest Computer
#35In the linked paper, they describe their choice of 180nm as optimal for power. Given the tools they used, they could make an even smaller computer with 130nm or 90nm technology. But the power draw would be higher according to the graph. Or they could add more memory instead of a smaller size.
The CPU is absolutely tiny, not much larger than the temperature sensor.
Re: Michigan Micro Mote – World's Smallest Computer
#36This is really cool. Running off of ambient light! I am looking forward to what they can do with swarms of them.
Sorry, I just epiphanised (don't worry, I'll clean it up later).
My "amazing thought":
One day, these things will be like Lego. You may care that your younger sister ate one, or the dog buried that part in the garden, but you won't "really care". not like a computer, or a phone!
If standards for mesh networking and cluster computing become a tiny bit better (and more widely adopted), these things are the internet of things. Almost everything else is obsolete.
Self powered, independant micro-modules that can somewhat autonomously join and depart from processing pools mean that upgrading your "home computer" means buying more Lego (or a new table, or light-bulbs, or a car) and moving it within range of the other stuff in your house. There will be no computer, just interfaces to your local compute cluster, which you probably won't personally own much of, due to shared processing power agreements with your neighbours and friends.
I know none of this is original, and I even get that this is the "big goal" of the IoT, but It's actually happening, and we get to see it happen! (along with a wonderful new bag of problems relating to super-distributed trust, cost, control etc.)
Sorry, over-excited, taking myself off to bed now.
Re: Michigan Micro Mote – World's Smallest Computer
#37This is really cool. Running off of ambient light! I am looking forward to what they can do with swarms of them.
Sorry, I just epiphanised (don't worry, I'll clean it up later). My "amazing thought": One day, these things will be like Lego. You may care that your younger sister ate one, or the dog buried that part in the garden, but you won't "really care". not like a computer, or a phone! If standards for mesh networking and cluster computing become a tiny bit better (and more widely adopted), these things are the internet of…
Latency between compute "molecules" will be a limiting factor.
Re: Michigan Micro Mote – World's Smallest Computer
#38Very cool. The pessimist (realist?) in me can't avoid remembering Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky" novel, where the perfect surveillance device is a network of "dust computers".
"See, there's mites around all the time. They use sparkles to talk to each other," Harv explained. "They're in the food and water, everywhere. And there's rules that these mites are supposed to follow. They're supposed to break down into safe pieces... But there are people who break those rules [so the] Protocol Enforcement guys make a mite to go out and find that mite and kill it. This dust - we call it toner - is actually the dead bodies of all those mites.
Toner: dead bits of nanomachines. From The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson.
Re: Michigan Micro Mote – World's Smallest Computer
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, you can see that scene in another brilliant SF novel: David Marusek's "Counting Heads" (even better that "A Deepness in the Sky" in my opinion)
Ehhh. Marusek makes several rather large conceptual leaps in order to make his plot hang together: notably, both human clones and intelligent machines have no civil rights, at all, to the point that either can be killed at the will of their owners. Most ludicrously, there's no hint of political opposition or a protest movement. At no point does any character say anything like "Hey, wait, maybe clones are humans too?"…
If there's anything Sci-Fi has taught me, it's that sentient machines will either be our salvation or our doom, and in both of those cases, treating them like they have no rights isn't good for our health in the long run, so to do so is stupid.
As for clones, considering how often our bodies replace all our cells, you aren't remotely close to the same person you were even a year ago, which proves that it's our minds and experiences/memories that make us who we are. With that in mind, and knowing many other people would agree, the idea that everyone would be ok with a clone slave force is absurd. Maybe if they were brainless chunks of lobotomized flesh incapable of learning and totally empty of sentient though, but otherwise?
Re: Michigan Micro Mote – World's Smallest Computer
#40[deleted]