Smaller, lower power computers are great. But the problem is, and remains, the power consumption of the RF channel. It's all well and good that your processor consumes microamps, but one second of WiFi traffic at a reasonable transmit power takes hundreds of milliamps. Smart sensing system's power consumption is dominated by wireless communication energy costs.
Michigan Micro Mote – World's Smallest Computer
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Re: Michigan Micro Mote – World's Smallest Computer
#42Very 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".
That's what came to mind when I read this sentence of the article: Numerous specks of technology could be discretely placed to invisibly monitor a home, business, or personal device. I wonder what the people working on these technologies think of pervasive surveillance, and their stance on the gradual loss of privacy trend, because that's essentially what they're enabling.
If you watch the video, at least one person working on this specifically calls out surveillance as a potential application. He doesn't explicitly say much about what their opinions on it are, but it seems they're definitely aware of what they're doing.
Re: Michigan Micro Mote – World's Smallest Computer
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
If you haven't read Charles Stross' Accelerando [1] yet, there's a character early on that advocates for AI rights so that maybe they will fairly treat the humans who made them later on.
[1] http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelera...
Re: Michigan Micro Mote – World's Smallest Computer
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Processor description is here: http://www.ee.columbia.edu/~mgseok/pdfs/phoenix_isscc_dac_de... I'm not sure it's an ARM..
Thanks! No, it's definitely not ARM, that was my point. It seems to consist of "8-bit CPU, a 52x40-bit DMEM, a 64x10-bit IMEM, a 64x10-bit IROM". Those are some seriously small memory sizes, a total of 64 instructions (the IROM holds the code) really isn't a lot to play with.
Yes.
Though if the silicon process technology is as good as they claim, then scaling that up a little bit (to be on-par with conventional 8-bit micros) won't be too bad. It will be interesting to see if they can maintain the kind of leakage they're talking about with a smaller process size.
Re: Michigan Micro Mote – World's Smallest Computer
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was waiting for a project to attempt "perpetual" powering. Next: harvesting human heat ?
Heat harvesting is tricky because it depends on temperature difference , so you need to keep the hot side and the cold side sufficiently far apart.
And you need some kind of heat engine to extract useful work from the difference. These typically have a significant size/mass associated with them.
I think solar cells are the way to go for now, though vibration harvesting can work for some applications.
Re: Michigan Micro Mote – World's Smallest Computer
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I'm reading through Ian Bank's Culture series currently, and enjoy the way he treats it.
In a post-scarcity culture, where energy and information are more or less the only resources, what argument is there against agreeing to give sufficiently advanced AIs rights?
Re: Michigan Micro Mote – World's Smallest Computer
#47Smaller, lower power computers are great. But the problem is, and remains, the power consumption of the RF channel. It's all well and good that your processor consumes microamps, but one second of WiFi traffic at a reasonable transmit power takes hundreds of milliamps. Smart sensing system's power consumption is dominated by wireless communication energy costs.
> It's all well and good that your processor consumes microamps, but one second of WiFi traffic at a reasonable transmit power takes hundreds of milliamps.
Early cell phones took an exceptional amount of power as well. Not simply because they were earlier tech, but because the nearest tower might be 20 miles away.
Mesh networking is going to be the new black if Io(miniature)T really takes off.
Re: Michigan Micro Mote – World's Smallest Computer
#48Stretching this a bit, when someone marriages this with the MIT things that auto-assemble... we'll risk getting some sort of Stargate's Asurans race, which are based on nanites. Self-assembling nanobots [0].
Of course this is just sci-fi... but nonetheless...
Re: Michigan Micro Mote – World's Smallest Computer
#49This is really cool. The article is pretty light on the technical details about the actual processor architecture. I think their choice of naming is unfortunate, confusion with ARM's Cortex-M3 is quite likely. Or are you supposed to pronounce this "M to the third" or something? Update : D'oh, of course it's "M-cubed". I knew that, I blame not being a native speaker for not thinking about it. :)
They usually pronounce it "M-cubed", which is also unfortunate because the university started some sort of research program (also called "M-cubed") a while after that name got engrained
It probably doesn't help that Ann Arbor is called A^2.
Re: Michigan Micro Mote – World's Smallest Computer
#50So there would literally be a microchip in my brain?! All kidding aside, this is cool.
"So there could literally be a microchip in my brain?!"
Fixed that for you.