The idea behind the most recent flexible computer processor from Arm, a United Kingdom chip designer, is that it can allow a device to print circuits onto paper, cardboard, or cloth.
A New Scientist report specified that such a technology can offer countless products that people use every day such as clothing and food containers a unique ability.
Such ability includes retrieving, processing, and transferring data online or through the use of the Internet.
In the past several years, processors have dropped in terms of cost and size. It has even come to the point that they are now commonly used in all things including watches, washing machines, and televisions, among others.
The difference is that nearly all chips developed at present are inflexible devices.
Moreover, these inflexible chips in present devices are developed on silicon wafers in extremely particular, not to mention costly, manufacturers where a lot of chemical and mechanical procedures are taking up to a maximum of eight weeks from beginning to finish.
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PlasticARM
Arm has devised PlasticARM, a 32-bit processor that has components and circuits printed on a plastic substrate, the same way a standard printer is depositing ink on paper when you print hard copies of documents.
According to Arm's James Myers, the flexible processor can operate various programs. However, presently, this processor is using a read-only memory. Therefore, it can only implement the code it was developed with. Upcoming version upon further development of the technology will be a totally programmable, as well as a flexible memory, the report specified.
Myers also said that the processor will not be fast nor will it be energy-saving. Citing an example, he said, that if one intends to track the shelf life of a vegetable, like lettuce, you can put the device on it, which is the main point of the innovation.
He also said that they are still looking for the applications, just like what he called "the original processors' guys" in the late 1970s.
Myers brought the questions that would potentially arise like if it is smart packaging, or if it's going to be gas sensors that can guarantee food safety. He continued explaining and said that it could also be "wearable health patches." All these are fun potential projects they are looking forward to.
Flexible Chips
Flexible chips are not a new invention to consider today. In 2013, IEEE Spectrum reported that then a new approach for developing very thin silicon chips. Nevertheless, these chips could result in numerous excellent-performance flexible applications that can upgrade IoT technology, such as in presentations, wireless technology, digital interfaces, energy preservation and harvest, sensors, and wearable biomedical gadgets.
The report specified that Silicon is a perfect semiconductor for such chips as its methodical assembly enables good switches that are far speedier compared to organic substitutes.
Usually, presently developed silicon chips are assembled on wafers with a maximum thickness of one millimeter. In this bulky condition, the wafers are firm and steady enough to endure the process of fabrication.
When trimmed down to a thickness between 100 and 300 micrometers, silicon wafers remain firm. However, despite their stiffness, they still need careful handling to avoid breakage.
Unlike the earlier-developed flexible processors, this device Arm developed is considered the most powerfully developed tech device.
It has more than 56,300 mechanisms in a minute packaging of below 60 square millimeters. As an equivalent, this gives it approximately a dozen times more components to perform computations calculations compared to the previously devised best flexible chip.
Established as Acorn in the mid-1980s, Arms develops and grants licenses to computer chip designs, which are then manufactured by employing its technology. If the IoT develops to comprise household products for everyday use and retail, there could definitely be a market for countless flexible computer chips.
The study "A Natively Flexible 32-bit Arm Microprocessor Invention" contains the newly developed flexible computer processor, which is published in Nature.
Related information about Arm's processor is shown on Carbax's YouTube video below:
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