The First High-Yield, Sub-Penny Plastic Processor

IEEE Spectrum reports:
For decades, hopeful techies have been promising a world where absolutely every object you encounter — bandages, bottles, bananas — will have some kind of smarts thanks to supercheap programmable plastic processors. If you've been wondering why that hasn't happened yet, it's that nobody has built working processors that can be made in the billions for less than a penny each.... The problem, according to engineers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and at British flexible-electronics manufacture PragmatIC Semiconductor, is that even the simplest industry-standard microcontrollers are too complex to make on plastic in bulk.

In research to be presented at the International Symposium on Computer Architecture later this month, the transatlantic team presents a simple yet fully functional plastic processor that could be made at sub-penny prices. The Illinois team designed 4-bit and 8-bit processors specifically to minimize size and maximize the percentage of working integrated circuits produced. Eighty-one percent of the 4-bit version worked, and that's a good enough yield, says team leader Rakesh Kumar, to breach the one-penny barrier.

'Flexible electronics has been niche for decades,' says Kumar. He adds that this yield study shows 'that they may be ready for the mainstream.'


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