4 ms·

Once upon a time, on USENET, someone had a .sig that predicted one day computers would be cheap enough they'd come in cereal boxes and we'd throw them away. Th

Once upon a time, on USENET, someone had a .sig that predicted one day computers would be cheap enough they'd come in cereal boxes and we'd throw them away. That day appears to have arrived.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
That happened way before. RFID cards for disposable public transportation tickets or those music greeting cards.
- mikepurvis 3y ago
  At a certain point it's more about the semantics of what a "computer" is. I don't know if I'd count an ASIC from a musical greeting card, though; and even within general purpose devices, microcontrollers vs microprocessors are typically delineated by the presence of an MMU.
  - kragen 3y ago
    the 6502, 8080, z80, 8085, 8086, 65816, 68000, and 68010 were universally described as microprocessors, not microcontrollers, but did not have mmus built in (and of these only the 68010 could easily have one bolted on, as i understand it) i think typically the thing that distinguished these from microcontrollers like the 8031, 8051, 8748, 8751, pic1650, etc., is that the microcontrollers had program memory built into them, either rom, eprom, or, starting in the 90s, flash. so they didn't need to be booted, they didn't need program ram, and in fact for a lot of applications they didn't need any external ram at all
    - 0xcde4c3db 3y ago
      I believe 68000 could use an MMU, but the catch was that it couldn't do demand paging, just memory protection and virtual/physical translation. I can't find the specific explanation right now, but it's something along the lines of the bus error exception (needed to actually stop the memory cycle) being special in a way that sometimes causes an incorrect PC value to be pushed to the stack. So you could terminate a process on an MMU exception, but resuming it was not reliable.
      - tzs 3y ago
        There was at least one company (Apollo, I think) that implemented demand paging on 68000 by using two 68000s. You had one, the leader, running as the "real" CPU, with the other, the follower, executing the same code on the same data but delayed by one instruction. If the leader got a bus error they would generate an interrupt on the follower to stop it before it executed the bus erroring instruction. The leader and follower would then switch roles, and the new leader could deal with the situation that had caused the bus error on the former leader.
        jacquesm 3y ago
        That's so clever. What a hack. I'm imagining the slow smile on the face of the person that came up with it. "What if...".
    - Karliss 3y ago
      Arguing about hard definitions differentiating microprocessor from microcontrollers based on single feature is pointless. It's a vague product/marketing category for certain usecases. There will be group of features that are more likely included or not included, but for most of them there will likely be exceptions. And the set of available features available MCUs and microprocessors change over the time. As technology improves both microcontrolers and processors are gaining new capabilities. * MCUs usually have program memory builtin. But then there chips like RP2040 or ESP32 which while considered MCUs are used with external Flash memory chips for storing the firmware. * MCUs usually have builtin RAM. But there are also some capable of directly using external RAM. * Then there are things like apple M1 chips, with a lot of stuff builtin you still don't call them MCU. * A bunch of ARM application processors/SOCs/Microprocessors might have enough resources builtin that they could be used as more or less standalone microcontrollers, without external RAM or flash memory. * some early microprocessors used external MMUs and it took some time until the processors settled on architecture that's closer to how we have things now * early personal computer processors were in a weird category in terms of price and processing power, in certain time period it wasn't impossible that similar microprocessor chip was used both for as main computer CPU and also for peripheral devices. The microprocessor name in my opinion at this point is slightly outdated. It's not like anyone beside hobbyists is making non micro processors out individual relays, transistors or logic chips.
      - kragen 3y ago
        mostly i agree; it's mostly a marketing distinction rather than a technical one actually i think non-micro (multi-integrated-circuit) processors are becoming popular again. the 'microprocessor' moniker wasn't coined to distinguish processors built out of discrete transistors from processors built out of integrated circuits; that was the 'second-generation computer' vs. 'third-generation computer' distinction back in the 01960s. what made a microprocessor 'micro' was that it was a chip instead of a circuit board
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - wongarsu 3y ago
    If I can program it to execute a sequence of arithmetic and logical operations that approximate a Turing machine (with a finite band), and reprogram it at a later date to execute a different sequence of such operations, that's a computer to me. I wouldn't count ASICs, but the PIC12F508 or the 3-cent microcontroller referenced in the post definitely count. Though by my definition of requiring reprogrammability and Turing completeness I am purposefully excluding many things that have historically been considered computers, like the many mechanical computers of the 19th and 20th century. From that standpoint I can see how some people might count ASICs as computers, even if I don't think that fits modern usage.
    - sitkack 3y ago
      These RISC-V chips are on the order of .02 to .10 (qty 1) https://www.wch-ic.com/products/CH32V003.html https://www.wch-ic.com/products/CH32V003.html The PIC12 has 25 bytes! of sram. The CH32V003 has 2k. https://www.aliexpress.us/w/wholesale-CH32V003.html?spm=a2g0o.home.search.0 https://www.aliexpress.us/w/wholesale-CH32V003.html?spm=a2g0...
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - mopsi 3y ago
    I feel that the semantics are quickly becoming irrelevant. Many everyday items like sports watches, toys, kitchen appliances, alarm clocks or table radios already have more processing power, more memory and storage, higher resolution screen and better network connectivity than my first desktop. Running Doom on mundane items like key fobs and light bulbs isn't too far away from where we are in 2024.
    - throwup238 3y ago
      > Running Doom on mundane items like key fobs and light bulbs isn't too far away from where we are in 2024. About that... https://www.pcmag.com/news/you-can-run-doom-on-a-chip-from-a-15-ikea-smart-lamp https://www.pcmag.com/news/you-can-run-doom-on-a-chip-from-a...
    - Sharlin 3y ago
      Doom on a light bulb is already done: https://hackaday.com/2021/06/15/a-smart-light-bulb-running-doom-is-a-pretty-bright-idea/ https://hackaday.com/2021/06/15/a-smart-light-bulb-running-d...
- Modified3019 3y ago
  I'm pretty sure musical greeting cards are also a thing.
yau8edq12i 3y ago
The worst offenders right now might be disposable vapes. I saw some sold with effing lcd screens built-in. For a disposable piece of crap.
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  The rechargeable lithium batteries in those really doesn't fit the "lithium shortage" and "we don't have enough battery capacity to build an EV for everyone" narrative
  - jdsully 3y ago
    One car has 4,500 cells - bigger cells than most of the vapes. So it really is a matter of scale.
    - exe34 3y ago
      How many cars does one smoke in a year though?
      - aftbit 3y ago
        Hopefully zero! Still, if you replace your car (or its battery) every 10 years (pretty long IMO) and smoke one vape a day (yikes), you'll use more cells on your car than your vapes.
        wlesieutre 3y ago
        I hope someone who replaces their car every 10 years isn’t just sending the old one to the compactor when they’re done with it For one, 10 years is a perfectly good used car for somebody, and for two with large EV battery packs we’d expect some lithium recycling effort Disposable vapes don’t have either of those going for them, batteries go straight in the trash after one charge cycle
        3y ago
pi-rat 3y ago
There’s been generic microcontrollers (usually single shot programmable) available for less than 3 cent per mcu for half a decade already. Check out Padauk and similar MCUs.
self 3y ago
I searched Google for this recently and could not find it. I tried it again on Google Groups just now and found one reference to it: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.arch/c/Y4C_Zjkb9VM/m/scDk_08TeIsJ https://groups.google.com/g/comp.arch/c/Y4C_Zjkb9VM/m/scDk_0... > Killer micros of today are a lot like flourescent lights -- cheap to operate, prevalent, and expensive to turn off. To see a machine standing idle, when you were raised as a child to "use cycles efficiently" is a gut-wrenching experience. Just remember Alan Kay's prediction: In the future, computers will come in cereal boxes and we will throw them away. March 20, 1990. I haven't found a source for Alan Kay's prediction.
- kens 3y ago
  Various fortune files attribute the quote to Robert Lucky. I would guess that it was misattributed to Alan Kay since quotes often get attached to famous people. "In the future, you're going to get computers as prizes in breakfast cereals. You'll throw them out because your house will be littered with them. -- Robert Lucky" https://web.mit.edu/~mkgray/jik/sipbsrc/src/fortune/scene https://web.mit.edu/~mkgray/jik/sipbsrc/src/fortune/scene
dragontamer 3y ago
At least a decade ago, a major magazine had a disposable chip inside for... I don't remember why. Does anyone remember this?
- justsomehnguy 3y ago
  Esquire October 2008 e-ink cover?
  - dragontamer 3y ago
    A good guess but that's not what I was thinking of... My example was all the above except the chip was centerfold in the middle of the magazine. Not on the cover... I'm surprised this happened more than once however.
  - throwaway2037 3y ago
    Someone hacked that too! Hacking the Esquire e-ink cover https://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2008-09/hacking-esquire-e-ink-cover/ https://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2008-09/hacking-esquire-e...
- HenryMulligan 3y ago
  I remember receiving this video ad for a Chevy pickup truck in a print issue of Popular Mechanics circa 2015 [0]. When disassembled, it consisted of a screen, battery, speaker, and circuit board. What the article doesn't say is that the circuit board had a micro-USB port which when connected to a computer mounted the internal storage as a drive, with the four-or-so videos it played accessible. I actually managed to find an existing home video video with the correct format (I wasn't familiar with FFmpeg at the time) and when one of the internal videos was replaced with mine (with the same filename), it would play instead. I believe the micro-USB also charged the internal LiPo battery as well, as I don't recall being worried too much about battery life. I probably still have the thing somewhere! [0] https://www.tubefilter.com/2015/04/16/chevrolet-video-ads-in-print-esquire-popular-mechanics/ https://www.tubefilter.com/2015/04/16/chevrolet-video-ads-in...
  - 3y ago
pietervdvn 3y ago
I got a server blade with a Xeon processor and 96 gigabytes of RAM for free last week... Granted, it is a ten year old device, but still. Another friend will give me a 180 gigabyte RAM device next week, cause it would go to the container otherwise...
- crote 3y ago
  Yeah, I remember looking into getting a refurbished cloud server instead of a brand new desktop a decade ago or so. They weren't free, but you'd still get a machine with 40 cores and 120gb of RAM for only $400. Pre-Ryzen, it was a very attractive offer. I never ended up buying one, because it'd consume way more power than made sense, and they're kinda shitty for gaming/workstation use due to low single-core performance and NUMA issues.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  It's the power consumption and the noise that gets you with those.
crote 3y ago
We've been there for about a decade now. Single-use paper transit tickets equipped with an RFID-capable microcontroller are quite common now.
- ezconnect 3y ago
  I used to keep those disposable bus ticket back in 2007 hoping to find a used for it. After a year I didn't find a use for it.

Once upon a time, on USENET, someone had a .sig that predicted one day computers would be cheap enough they'd come in cereal boxes and we'd throw them away. That day appears to have arrived.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

That happened way before. RFID cards for disposable public transportation tickets or those music greeting cards.

mikepurvis 3y ago
At a certain point it's more about the semantics of what a "computer" is. I don't know if I'd count an ASIC from a musical greeting card, though; and even within general purpose devices, microcontrollers vs microprocessors are typically delineated by the presence of an MMU.
- kragen 3y ago
  the 6502, 8080, z80, 8085, 8086, 65816, 68000, and 68010 were universally described as microprocessors, not microcontrollers, but did not have mmus built in (and of these only the 68010 could easily have one bolted on, as i understand it) i think typically the thing that distinguished these from microcontrollers like the 8031, 8051, 8748, 8751, pic1650, etc., is that the microcontrollers had program memory built into them, either rom, eprom, or, starting in the 90s, flash. so they didn't need to be booted, they didn't need program ram, and in fact for a lot of applications they didn't need any external ram at all
  - 0xcde4c3db 3y ago
    I believe 68000 could use an MMU, but the catch was that it couldn't do demand paging, just memory protection and virtual/physical translation. I can't find the specific explanation right now, but it's something along the lines of the bus error exception (needed to actually stop the memory cycle) being special in a way that sometimes causes an incorrect PC value to be pushed to the stack. So you could terminate a process on an MMU exception, but resuming it was not reliable.
    - tzs 3y ago
      There was at least one company (Apollo, I think) that implemented demand paging on 68000 by using two 68000s. You had one, the leader, running as the "real" CPU, with the other, the follower, executing the same code on the same data but delayed by one instruction. If the leader got a bus error they would generate an interrupt on the follower to stop it before it executed the bus erroring instruction. The leader and follower would then switch roles, and the new leader could deal with the situation that had caused the bus error on the former leader.
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        That's so clever. What a hack. I'm imagining the slow smile on the face of the person that came up with it. "What if...".
  - Karliss 3y ago
    Arguing about hard definitions differentiating microprocessor from microcontrollers based on single feature is pointless. It's a vague product/marketing category for certain usecases. There will be group of features that are more likely included or not included, but for most of them there will likely be exceptions. And the set of available features available MCUs and microprocessors change over the time. As technology improves both microcontrolers and processors are gaining new capabilities. * MCUs usually have program memory builtin. But then there chips like RP2040 or ESP32 which while considered MCUs are used with external Flash memory chips for storing the firmware. * MCUs usually have builtin RAM. But there are also some capable of directly using external RAM. * Then there are things like apple M1 chips, with a lot of stuff builtin you still don't call them MCU. * A bunch of ARM application processors/SOCs/Microprocessors might have enough resources builtin that they could be used as more or less standalone microcontrollers, without external RAM or flash memory. * some early microprocessors used external MMUs and it took some time until the processors settled on architecture that's closer to how we have things now * early personal computer processors were in a weird category in terms of price and processing power, in certain time period it wasn't impossible that similar microprocessor chip was used both for as main computer CPU and also for peripheral devices. The microprocessor name in my opinion at this point is slightly outdated. It's not like anyone beside hobbyists is making non micro processors out individual relays, transistors or logic chips.
    - kragen 3y ago
      mostly i agree; it's mostly a marketing distinction rather than a technical one actually i think non-micro (multi-integrated-circuit) processors are becoming popular again. the 'microprocessor' moniker wasn't coined to distinguish processors built out of discrete transistors from processors built out of integrated circuits; that was the 'second-generation computer' vs. 'third-generation computer' distinction back in the 01960s. what made a microprocessor 'micro' was that it was a chip instead of a circuit board
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- wongarsu 3y ago
  If I can program it to execute a sequence of arithmetic and logical operations that approximate a Turing machine (with a finite band), and reprogram it at a later date to execute a different sequence of such operations, that's a computer to me. I wouldn't count ASICs, but the PIC12F508 or the 3-cent microcontroller referenced in the post definitely count. Though by my definition of requiring reprogrammability and Turing completeness I am purposefully excluding many things that have historically been considered computers, like the many mechanical computers of the 19th and 20th century. From that standpoint I can see how some people might count ASICs as computers, even if I don't think that fits modern usage.
  - sitkack 3y ago
    These RISC-V chips are on the order of .02 to .10 (qty 1) https://www.wch-ic.com/products/CH32V003.html https://www.wch-ic.com/products/CH32V003.html The PIC12 has 25 bytes! of sram. The CH32V003 has 2k. https://www.aliexpress.us/w/wholesale-CH32V003.html?spm=a2g0o.home.search.0 https://www.aliexpress.us/w/wholesale-CH32V003.html?spm=a2g0...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- mopsi 3y ago
  I feel that the semantics are quickly becoming irrelevant. Many everyday items like sports watches, toys, kitchen appliances, alarm clocks or table radios already have more processing power, more memory and storage, higher resolution screen and better network connectivity than my first desktop. Running Doom on mundane items like key fobs and light bulbs isn't too far away from where we are in 2024.
  - throwup238 3y ago
    > Running Doom on mundane items like key fobs and light bulbs isn't too far away from where we are in 2024. About that... https://www.pcmag.com/news/you-can-run-doom-on-a-chip-from-a-15-ikea-smart-lamp https://www.pcmag.com/news/you-can-run-doom-on-a-chip-from-a...
  - Sharlin 3y ago
    Doom on a light bulb is already done: https://hackaday.com/2021/06/15/a-smart-light-bulb-running-doom-is-a-pretty-bright-idea/ https://hackaday.com/2021/06/15/a-smart-light-bulb-running-d...
Modified3019 3y ago
I'm pretty sure musical greeting cards are also a thing.

yau8edq12i 3y ago

The worst offenders right now might be disposable vapes. I saw some sold with effing lcd screens built-in. For a disposable piece of crap.

Scoundreller 3y ago
The rechargeable lithium batteries in those really doesn't fit the "lithium shortage" and "we don't have enough battery capacity to build an EV for everyone" narrative
- jdsully 3y ago
  One car has 4,500 cells - bigger cells than most of the vapes. So it really is a matter of scale.
  - exe34 3y ago
    How many cars does one smoke in a year though?
    - aftbit 3y ago
      Hopefully zero! Still, if you replace your car (or its battery) every 10 years (pretty long IMO) and smoke one vape a day (yikes), you'll use more cells on your car than your vapes.
      - wlesieutre 3y ago
        I hope someone who replaces their car every 10 years isn’t just sending the old one to the compactor when they’re done with it For one, 10 years is a perfectly good used car for somebody, and for two with large EV battery packs we’d expect some lithium recycling effort Disposable vapes don’t have either of those going for them, batteries go straight in the trash after one charge cycle
        3y ago

pi-rat 3y ago

There’s been generic microcontrollers (usually single shot programmable) available for less than 3 cent per mcu for half a decade already. Check out Padauk and similar MCUs.

self 3y ago

I searched Google for this recently and could not find it. I tried it again on Google Groups just now and found one reference to it: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.arch/c/Y4C_Zjkb9VM/m/scDk_08TeIsJ https://groups.google.com/g/comp.arch/c/Y4C_Zjkb9VM/m/scDk_0... > Killer micros of today are a lot like flourescent lights -- cheap to operate, prevalent, and expensive to turn off. To see a machine standing idle, when you were raised as a child to "use cycles efficiently" is a gut-wrenching experience. Just remember Alan Kay's prediction: In the future, computers will come in cereal boxes and we will throw them away. March 20, 1990. I haven't found a source for Alan Kay's prediction.

kens 3y ago
Various fortune files attribute the quote to Robert Lucky. I would guess that it was misattributed to Alan Kay since quotes often get attached to famous people. "In the future, you're going to get computers as prizes in breakfast cereals. You'll throw them out because your house will be littered with them. -- Robert Lucky" https://web.mit.edu/~mkgray/jik/sipbsrc/src/fortune/scene https://web.mit.edu/~mkgray/jik/sipbsrc/src/fortune/scene

dragontamer 3y ago

At least a decade ago, a major magazine had a disposable chip inside for... I don't remember why. Does anyone remember this?

justsomehnguy 3y ago
Esquire October 2008 e-ink cover?
- dragontamer 3y ago
  A good guess but that's not what I was thinking of... My example was all the above except the chip was centerfold in the middle of the magazine. Not on the cover... I'm surprised this happened more than once however.
- throwaway2037 3y ago
  Someone hacked that too! Hacking the Esquire e-ink cover https://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2008-09/hacking-esquire-e-ink-cover/ https://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2008-09/hacking-esquire-e...
HenryMulligan 3y ago
I remember receiving this video ad for a Chevy pickup truck in a print issue of Popular Mechanics circa 2015 [0]. When disassembled, it consisted of a screen, battery, speaker, and circuit board. What the article doesn't say is that the circuit board had a micro-USB port which when connected to a computer mounted the internal storage as a drive, with the four-or-so videos it played accessible. I actually managed to find an existing home video video with the correct format (I wasn't familiar with FFmpeg at the time) and when one of the internal videos was replaced with mine (with the same filename), it would play instead. I believe the micro-USB also charged the internal LiPo battery as well, as I don't recall being worried too much about battery life. I probably still have the thing somewhere! [0] https://www.tubefilter.com/2015/04/16/chevrolet-video-ads-in-print-esquire-popular-mechanics/ https://www.tubefilter.com/2015/04/16/chevrolet-video-ads-in...
- 3y ago

pietervdvn 3y ago

I got a server blade with a Xeon processor and 96 gigabytes of RAM for free last week... Granted, it is a ten year old device, but still. Another friend will give me a 180 gigabyte RAM device next week, cause it would go to the container otherwise...

crote 3y ago
Yeah, I remember looking into getting a refurbished cloud server instead of a brand new desktop a decade ago or so. They weren't free, but you'd still get a machine with 40 cores and 120gb of RAM for only $400. Pre-Ryzen, it was a very attractive offer. I never ended up buying one, because it'd consume way more power than made sense, and they're kinda shitty for gaming/workstation use due to low single-core performance and NUMA issues.
jacquesm 3y ago
It's the power consumption and the noise that gets you with those.

crote 3y ago

We've been there for about a decade now. Single-use paper transit tickets equipped with an RFID-capable microcontroller are quite common now.

ezconnect 3y ago
I used to keep those disposable bus ticket back in 2007 hoping to find a used for it. After a year I didn't find a use for it.