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The first high-yield, sub-penny plastic processor

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: The first high-yield, sub-penny plastic processor

#61

Post by squarefoot »

colordrops wrote: post #17
ziftface wrote: post #13

Why would anyone actively work towards "ubiquitous electronics"? That sounds like a nightmare.

Some people say electronics of any sort are a nightmare. Where do you draw the line?

> Where do you draw the line?

I would draw it around the user. Devices aren't inherently bad, unless they're used against their owners. Also, removing the concept of ownership creates a new set of problems. Cellphones would be a wonderful technology if their main purpose wasn't to profile and track users pushing them to micropay or be exposed to advertising to use functions that they could easily find, download and install on more open platforms. Ditto for Smart TVs, car electronics, home assistants, etc. they all are faces of the same problem: manufacturers went past that line and the user lost all ownership and control in exchange for low cost and ease of use, but this came at a price that some of us aren't willing to pay.

Re: The first high-yield, sub-penny plastic processor

#63

Post by Lester_Square »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #31
apienx wrote: post #29

The 2000 Nobel prize in chemistry was awarded for the discovery of organic/polymer semiconductors. The field's come a long way and there has been lots of innovation happening since. Prototypes of polymer-based ICs is nothing new (I've seen plenty of them over the last decade). Metal is still preferred for interconnects, but that's pretty cheap to process in roll-to-roll. I can vouch for this being legit. That said, p…

> That said, polymers (soft matter) doesn't do well in heat (or light), so applications are (and will forever be) restricted to low-cost throw-away devices IMO. I can think of plenty of sterile single-use 'use cases' in Medical Devices where a throw away polymer processor would be useful but an existing semi-conductor processor would not make financial sense to use.

> I can think of plenty of sterile single-use 'use cases' in Medical Devices where a throw away polymer processor would be useful but an existing semi-conductor processor would not make financial sense to use.

Could you provide some examples?

Re: The first high-yield, sub-penny plastic processor

#64

Post by lifeisstillgood »

smaudet wrote: post #57
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #48

I love the teaching potential here - program this 4 or 8 bit processor. They are so cheap you can give them to pupils in volume that you don't care how they experiment with them, and there is potential that they are simple enough to literally fit in your head. More of these please - the opportunities must be there

I'm curious what they will be able to hook up to one, and how it will be programmed - if you add a tiny amount of flash this could definitely be interesting, maybe have a dollar processor though. The use cases for a student are more difficult to imagine - turn a light on an IO port is fun and somewhat education but you will need to do something more informative, like generate a coded signal, i.e. simulate an RFID chi…

It is a fair point - I just got excited about heading back to a few thousand transistors that we can understand idea. I doubt there are more than ten people who can reason about the latest things coming out of Intel.

One presumes that there must be some general purpose processor else this is just a RFID specific die (It does say ALU, PC and branch logic) so one assumes the idea is to be able to flash something some how. Then again, the cost of hooking up a die to flash it must exceed 1c so ... oh I am just talking in circles.

Re: The first high-yield, sub-penny plastic processor

#65

Post by tonypags »

What's the environmental impact for adding more cheap plastic to all of the things? Serious question. The onus should be placed on the producer to ensure they are sustainable (the opposite of how it's always been done, by the consumer). The article makes no mention of this.

I get that we're still at the laboratory phase, but I think it should still be part of the discussion.

Re: The first high-yield, sub-penny plastic processor

#66

Post by incrudible »

chillingeffect wrote: post #52
m12k wrote: post #39

Does anyone have a good idea for use cases for these? It seems a lot of use cases for "small, cheap electronics" are already covered by RFID, where you keep the processing "smarts" in the device that reads the RFID. So when do you need actual computation to take part on each tiny chip? Some kind of "smart dust" mesh network? (assuming you can pair these chips with an antenna and power source)

Sure... replace any barcode with one and it can remember its history of scanning.

What is the use of that, then? Also, how does that require computation?

Re: The first high-yield, sub-penny plastic processor

#67

Post by rasz »

apienx wrote: post #29

The 2000 Nobel prize in chemistry was awarded for the discovery of organic/polymer semiconductors. The field's come a long way and there has been lots of innovation happening since. Prototypes of polymer-based ICs is nothing new (I've seen plenty of them over the last decade). Metal is still preferred for interconnects, but that's pretty cheap to process in roll-to-roll. I can vouch for this being legit. That said, p…

My mind immediately went to Bell Labs Jan Schön superconducting plastics almost landing him a Nobel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfDoml-Db64 (spoiler alert - it was all a scam)

Re: The first high-yield, sub-penny plastic processor

#68

Post by rasz »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #48

I love the teaching potential here - program this 4 or 8 bit processor. They are so cheap you can give them to pupils in volume that you don't care how they experiment with them, and there is potential that they are simple enough to literally fit in your head. More of these please - the opportunities must be there

simple silicon micros are also ridiculously cheap, its the packaging that kills you and makes them rarely go below $1.

Re: The first high-yield, sub-penny plastic processor

#69

Post by sydthrowaway »

MisterTea wrote: post #56
sydthrowaway wrote: post #55

Asking the dumb question. How does plastic conduct electricity...

From the article: "The processors his team built were made using the flexible thin-film semiconductor indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO), which can be built on plastic and continues to work even when bent around a radius of millimeters." It's not the plastic that conducts, instead it is the foundation which the conducting material is built upon.

And what's the medium for current semiconductors

Re: The first high-yield, sub-penny plastic processor

#70

Post by lmc »

scoopertrooper wrote: post #40
lmc wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are all thinking bananas (with a little rounding) [0] [0]: https://www.pfizer.com/news/articles/how_genetically_related...

Speak for yourself, I haven't had a thought in years. I'm allll banana.

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