For the first time, scientists have created a flexible programmable chip that is not made of silicon. The new ultralow-power 32-bit microprocessor from U.K.-based Pragmatic Semiconductor and its colleagues can operate while bent, and can run machine learning workloads. The microchip’s open-source RISC-V architecture suggests it might cost less than a dollar, putting it in a position to power wearable healthcare electronics, smart package labels, and other inexpensive items, its inventors add.
For example, “we can develop an ECG patch that has flexible electrodes attached to the chest and a flexible microprocessor connected to flexible electrodes to classify arrhythmia conditions by processing the ECG data from a patient,” says Emre Ozer, senior director of processor development at Pragmantic, a flexible chip manufacturer in Cambridge, England. Detecting normal heart rhythms versus an arrhythmia “is a machine learning task that can run in software in the flexible microprocessor,” he says.
Flexible electronics have the potential for any application requiring interactions with soft materials, such as devices worn on or implanted within the body. Those applications could include on-skin computers, soft robotics, and brain-machine interfaces. But, conventional electronics are made of rigid materials such as silicon.
Open-source, Flexible, and Fast Enough
Pragmatic sought to create a flexible microchip that cost significantly less to make than a silicon processor. The new device, named Flex-RV, is a 32-bit microprocessor based on the metal-oxide semiconductor indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO).
Attempts to create flexible devices from silicon require special packaging for the brittle microchips to protect them from the mechanical stresses of bending and stretching. In contrast, pliable thin-film transistors made from IGZO can be made directly at low temperatures onto flexible plastics, leading to lower costs.
The new microchip is based on the RISC-V instruction set. (RISC stands for reduced instruction set computer.) First introduced in 2010, RISC-V aims to enable smaller, lower-power, better-performing processors by slimming down the core set of instructions they can execute.
“Our end goal is to democratize computing by developing a license-free microprocessor,” Ozer says.
RISC-V’s is both free and open-source, letting chip designer dodge the costly licensing fees associated with proprietary architectures such as x86 and Arm. In addition, proprietary architectures offer limited opportunities to customize them, as adding new instructions is generally restricted. In contrast, RISC-V encourages such changes.
A bent Flex-RV microprocessor runs a program to print ‘Hello World’. Pragmatic Semiconductor
“We chose the Serv designed by Olof Kindgren… as the open source 32-bit RISC-V CPU when we designed Flex-RV,” Ozer says. “Serv is the smallest RISC-V processor in the open-source community.”
Other processors have been built using…
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The post “Flexible RISC-V Processor: Could Cost Less Than a Dollar” by Charles Q. Choi was published on 09/25/2024 by spectrum.ieee.org