5 ms·
Caltech Potato Chips (1996)
- tptacek 11y agoTI famously brags (and has videos demonstrating) that you can power an MSP430 off a lemon.
- c54 11y agoAnd the msp430 has two internal clocks/oscillators! (iirc)
- TeMPOraL 11y agoMSP430 is a cute little bugger! I also liked the TI's MSP430-derivative evaluation platform that was bundled in a... watch[0]. eZ430 Chronos was my first smartwatch, and it's still somewhere in the closet, still running off that same coin battery it had when I first bought it few years ago. [0] - http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/EZ430-Chronos http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/EZ430-Chronos
- rwg 11y agoBy comparison, today's (January 1996) state-of-the art technologies have feature sizes of about 0.25 microns. And today (November 2015), chips manufactured on 14 nanometer (0.014 micron) processes are shipping in volume.
- aylons 11y agoDo not confuse with Potato Semiconductors, which make famous high-speed chips: http://www.potatosemi.com/ http://www.potatosemi.com/ Sadly, I've never had the chance to try these Potato chips.
- cbd1984 11y agoWell, that was certainly an enriching read. More seriously, we've done this before. Old Usenet thread about asynchronous PDP-10s and PDP-6s: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.sys.pdp10/wqWlZQ6m9Ew https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.sys.pdp10/wqWlZQ...
- fouric 11y agoSo the processor computation rate increases/decreases as voltage does? This could have interesting applications, such as a treadmill that allows you to compute (run games? watch videos?) more the faster you run, or a phone that gradually decreases the power supply to its processor to conserve power as its battery loses charge.
- zeusk 11y agoNo, but higher voltage allows for lower gate propogation delay.
- fouric 11y agoI'm afraid that I don't understand the difference...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- mjbs 11y agoThat is correct, but the difference may not be that noticeable. We can look at the GA144 asynchronous computer as an example. You can find a relevant graph that compares supply voltage to execution speed on page 20 of this reference: http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/DB002-110705-G144A12.pdf http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/DB002-110...
- emcq 11y agoBlast from the past! If you think this kind of less traditional circuit design is cool, you should also check out some of the more recent stuff in low-power asynchronous architectures: http://vlsi.cornell.edu/research.php http://vlsi.cornell.edu/research.php https://web.stanford.edu/group/brainsinsilicon/neurogrid.html https://web.stanford.edu/group/brainsinsilicon/neurogrid.htm... http://paulmerolla.com/merolla_main_som.pdf http://paulmerolla.com/merolla_main_som.pdf
- mjbs 11y agoAnd if you want to get an asynchronous chip you can play around with today, check out the GA144 from Greenarrays. I believe this is currently the only commercially available asynchronous processor. http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/products/index.html http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/products/index.html
- jasonjei 11y agoIn the Portal 2 video game where the main character throws the erstwhile antagonist (now uneasy ally) GLaDOS computer "chip" into a potato, is that joke connected to this at all?
- geocrasher 11y agoI was wondering the same thing!
- peterburkimsher 11y ago"Sorry for the long post, here's a potato." That must be one of the earliest examples of that meme!
- dang 11y agoMore at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10612349 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10612349.
- madengr 11y agoFunny, I still have all that exact test equipment shown in the photos, with the exception of the meter in the upper right.
- oxplot 11y ago"that's two potatoes in series" - rarely one comes across such a combination of words. I'm still laughing.