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We've designed $0,10 ultra low power 8/16/32/64 bit processor SoC with built in MPPT buck/boost converters so they can be powered directly from single solar cel

We've designed $0,10 ultra low power 8/16/32/64 bit processor SoC with built in MPPT buck/boost converters so they can be powered directly from single solar cells or small charge Li-ion cells. They have low power networking so you can create clusters. I'm not sure yet if they will be even lower power than you 5 mW processors but 1 mW is our aim. I would argue that a solar powered computer would benefit from a 2 megabyte (could be as low as 128KB) SRAM operating system with GUI like Squeak or Smalltalk-80 instead of a Linux as you propose. We've learned a lot from the low power OLPC designs. Thanks for the invite, I'm eager to collaborate on your solar powered computers but I'm having trouble finding your email in your githubs. Could you email us morphle73 at g mail dot com?

initramfs 2y ago
Thanks, it is giovanni dot los___ at gmail.com (it should be in your inbox) Also, Ambiq Micro has a 2MB MRAM (+2.75MB SRAM) processor https://www.top-electronics.com/en/apollo4-blue-plus-192-mhz-2-75mb-bga https://www.top-electronics.com/en/apollo4-blue-plus-192-mhz... that can run on solar power (it uses ~5uA/MHz, Cortex M4) and Andreas Eriksen got LISP text editor to run on 384K RAM with the Apollo3 https://hackaday.io/project/184340-potatop https://hackaday.io/project/184340-potatop and 4'4" Memory In Pixel Display. I read that lithium-ion capacitors have much faster charging than regular li-on. https://www.tindie.com/products/jaspersikken/solar-harvesting-into-lithium-ion-capacitor/ https://www.tindie.com/products/jaspersikken/solar-harvestin... (and longer lifespan)
RF_Savage 2y ago
That sounds very suitable for solar powered IoT and IIoT sensors, so the talk about GUI's feels confusing. Zephyr or freertos are perfectly fine with sub-2meg amounts if SRAM.
kragen 2y ago
this is pretty exciting! i agree about the squeak-like approach. what would you use for the screen? i've been thinking that sharp's memory-in-pixel displays are the best option, but my power budget for the zorzpad is a milliwatt including screen, flash, and keyboard, not just the soc
- morphle 2y ago
  There are ultra low power ePaper displays that only need power to change pixels but need no power to light the display or hold an image. They are usually black and white or grayscale. > Typically, the energy required for a full switch on an E-Ink display is about 7 to 8mJ/cm2. >The most common eInk screen takes 750 - 1800 mW during an active update The Smalltalk-80 Alto, the Lisa and the 128K Mac had full window GUIs in black and white and desk top publishing. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) had low power LCD color screens especially made for use in sunlight and would combine nicely with solar panels.
  - kragen 2y ago
    hey, i've been looking for those numbers for years! where did you get them? the particular memory lcd i have is 35mm × 58mm, which is 20cm², so at 7½ millijoules per square cm, updating the same area of epaper would require 150 millijoules to update if it were epaper. the lcd in fact requires 50 microwatts to maintain the display. so, if it updates more than once every 50 minutes, it will use less power than the epaper display, by your numbers. (my previous estimate was 20 minutes, based on much less precise numbers.) at one frame per second it would use about a thousand times less power than epaper so in this context epaper is ultra high power rather than ultra low power. and the olpc pixel qi lcds, excellent as they are, are even more power-hungry pixel qi and epaper both have the advantage over the memory lcd that they support grayscale (and pixel qi supports color when the backlight is on)
    - morphle 2y ago
      >hey, i've been looking for those numbers for years! where did you get them? I just googled "low power epaper" and read the summaries for mentions of mW and J
      - kragen 2y ago
        can you link to the sources that those numbers came from? i wouldn't be surprised if serp summaries were llm-generated nonsense

initramfs 2y ago

Thanks, it is giovanni dot los___ at gmail.com (it should be in your inbox) Also, Ambiq Micro has a 2MB MRAM (+2.75MB SRAM) processor https://www.top-electronics.com/en/apollo4-blue-plus-192-mhz-2-75mb-bga https://www.top-electronics.com/en/apollo4-blue-plus-192-mhz... that can run on solar power (it uses ~5uA/MHz, Cortex M4) and Andreas Eriksen got LISP text editor to run on 384K RAM with the Apollo3 https://hackaday.io/project/184340-potatop https://hackaday.io/project/184340-potatop and 4'4" Memory In Pixel Display. I read that lithium-ion capacitors have much faster charging than regular li-on. https://www.tindie.com/products/jaspersikken/solar-harvesting-into-lithium-ion-capacitor/ https://www.tindie.com/products/jaspersikken/solar-harvestin... (and longer lifespan)

RF_Savage 2y ago

That sounds very suitable for solar powered IoT and IIoT sensors, so the talk about GUI's feels confusing. Zephyr or freertos are perfectly fine with sub-2meg amounts if SRAM.

kragen 2y ago

this is pretty exciting! i agree about the squeak-like approach. what would you use for the screen? i've been thinking that sharp's memory-in-pixel displays are the best option, but my power budget for the zorzpad is a milliwatt including screen, flash, and keyboard, not just the soc

morphle 2y ago
There are ultra low power ePaper displays that only need power to change pixels but need no power to light the display or hold an image. They are usually black and white or grayscale. > Typically, the energy required for a full switch on an E-Ink display is about 7 to 8mJ/cm2. >The most common eInk screen takes 750 - 1800 mW during an active update The Smalltalk-80 Alto, the Lisa and the 128K Mac had full window GUIs in black and white and desk top publishing. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) had low power LCD color screens especially made for use in sunlight and would combine nicely with solar panels.
- kragen 2y ago
  hey, i've been looking for those numbers for years! where did you get them? the particular memory lcd i have is 35mm × 58mm, which is 20cm², so at 7½ millijoules per square cm, updating the same area of epaper would require 150 millijoules to update if it were epaper. the lcd in fact requires 50 microwatts to maintain the display. so, if it updates more than once every 50 minutes, it will use less power than the epaper display, by your numbers. (my previous estimate was 20 minutes, based on much less precise numbers.) at one frame per second it would use about a thousand times less power than epaper so in this context epaper is ultra high power rather than ultra low power. and the olpc pixel qi lcds, excellent as they are, are even more power-hungry pixel qi and epaper both have the advantage over the memory lcd that they support grayscale (and pixel qi supports color when the backlight is on)
  - morphle 2y ago
    >hey, i've been looking for those numbers for years! where did you get them? I just googled "low power epaper" and read the summaries for mentions of mW and J
    - kragen 2y ago
      can you link to the sources that those numbers came from? i wouldn't be surprised if serp summaries were llm-generated nonsense