Bending the rules with flexible non-silicon 32-bit RISC-V chip

Brit chipmaker Pragmatic Semiconductor has created a 32-bit microprocessor in a “flexible technology that is fully functional while flexed.”

The Flex-RV processor is no longer all the time indubitably just a few hit performance benchmarks, but growing a brand novel bending compute resolution to slot in unconventional locations. That acknowledged, it does encompass a programmable machine-studying hardware accelerator and RISC-V instructions for using it, so it must always invent some easy AI work.

Ditching former silicon, standard for archaic processors and compute devices, this RISC-V-basically based fully microprocessor uses indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) transistors layered on polyimide.

IGZO is more over and over stumbled on in flat screens and touchscreen devices. Basically, the Flex-RV processor is a chip that works while wrapped round a pencil, while clocking in at a tiresome 60 kHz. But who cares about clock speeds when the blueprint is cheap and disposable tech?

The Flex-RV sports real 12,600 good judgment gates, but that is indubitably ample to energy a brand novel generation of embedded purposes – issues equivalent to trim bandages, flexible electronics, and interactive packaging. The RV32E Flex-RV chip is programmable, bendable, and practical. The main exercise case is for the on a customary foundation devices that silicon cannot or received’t reach. Cambridge-basically based fully Pragmatic’s pitch is easy: Attach computing the put silicon is no longer all the time indubitably relevant.

• Pragmatic Semiconductor opens UK’s first 300mm wafer fab in Durham
• Brit flexible chip firm Pragmatic ratings funding to steal manufacturing
• UK government’s semiconductor mind belief meets for the first time
• Chipmakers threaten to defect to US, EU if UK would no longer fetch its semiconductor plans sorted

The Brit firm at the wait on of the tech opened its Pragmatic Park pickle at Durham, northeast England, earlier this year, claiming it became the UK’s first manufacturing facility for producing 300mm semiconductor wafers.

The Cambridge boffins published a paper on the tech at the wait on of Flex-RV in Nature earlier this week.

This is no longer all the time indubitably real about making chips flexible real for fun; the staunch kicker is the low-price of manufacturing. IGZO fabrication would no longer need the dapper-room-stage precision that silicon demands, cutting all these main manufacturing overheads. Since it would no longer atomize under stress, the Flex-RV additionally would no longer need the dear packaging of silicon chips. Being low-price, rugged, and adaptable makes it the wonderful fit for rapid-transferring client goods, disposable scientific tech, and wherever else you would by no way speak to position a CPU.

The tech is bending the rules, moderately literally, and it be more than real technical gymnastics. It is about making computing low-price and flexible. Regular readers will know now we have previously lined boffins’ efforts to produce flexible chips and electronics – to illustrate, right here, right here, and right here.

This style of silicon-free know-how marks a vital shift from the energy-hungry paradigms we glance in silicon to being more pervasive, albeit a long way slower by way of raw MHz (kHz indubitably).

It is additionally nice to glance more RISC-V-successfully matched silicon flying round, filling the nooks and crannies the put identical old silicon cannot physically mosey. Don’t inquire to whisk Crysis in your next trim bandage or scientific software program, but we could well perhaps presumably real be heading for a future the put every surface-stage software program, product, and packet has a mind powered by a Flex-RV chip/IC or a an identical silicon-free software program. ®