[PLUG-TALK] Disposabile microchips

[Rigel Hope]

there's a paduak microcontroller available right now, independent of python
or any "working towards" that is $0.03 apiece.

it's write-once, and has limited memory, but still, three cent
microcontroller.

it has most of an open-source toolchain too, last i checked.

(i get all my information in this sphere from hackaday)

On Wed, Sep 25, 2019 at 5:28 AM Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com>
wrote:

> Keith, Galen, and others may find this interesting. I skipped reading most
> of The Economist's Technology Quarterly on the Internet of Things but one
> reader posted an abstract of one article there where Python is used to make
> single-purpose chips.
>
> Rich
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> The latest Technology Quarterly in The Economist is about "The Internet Of
> Things".
>
> Python gets a mention in an article on "How to build a disposable
> microchip". It is quite a long article, so here are the relevant extracts.
>
> "The goal is to produce a robust, bendable, mass-producible computer,
> complete with sensors and the ability to communicate with the outside
> world,
> for less than $0.01 apiece. A prototype version, shown off at Arm's
> headquarters in Cambridge, looks like a stiffer-than-usual piece of tape
> festooned with circuit traces."
>
> "The chip uses a simple form of machine learning called a Bayesian
> classifier. Flexibility of use was sacrificed: to keep thinks as cheap and
> simple as possible the algorithm is etched directly into the plastic,
> meaning the chips are not reprogrammable."
>
> "Since chip design is expensive, and chip designers scarce, he and his team
> have been working on software tools to simplify that task. The idea is to
> describe a new algorithm in Python, a widely used programming language, and
> then have software turn it into a circuit diagram that can be fed into
> Pragmatic's chipmaking machines. That approach has attracted interest from
> DARPA ..."
>
> Hope this is of interest.
>
> Frank Millman
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