10 ms·

The world's smallest ARM chip announced, designed for swallowable computers

77 points by zaaaaz 14y ago

trendspotter 14y ago
Interesting. Freescale's original press release didn't mention that the chip was designed for swallowable computers: http://media.freescale.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=196520&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1789231 http://media.freescale.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=196520&p=irol...
ignostic 14y ago
These small developments are hugely exciting to me, primarily because they move us a little closer to the inevitable future of biological machines in our bodies. Imagine little robots that crawl through your veins clearing out cholesterol, or hunting down cancer cells and signaling the immune system to attack them. We'll get there - probably sooner than most people think.
- Someone 14y ago
  I think that, if we mamage to do that, the biochemists will win that race, not the lithographers. Veins have the (for this goal) unfortunate property of repeatedly splitting into less wide veins. I think macrophages are the largest cells in the blood; they typically are 20 micrometer or 2E-5m in diameter. To get there, this thing would have to shrink by a factor of 100 linearly, or 10,000 in area. That's about 13 Moore's law iterations or 20-ish years. I doubt we will get those from silicon. And that's ignoring the fact that capillaries are 5-10 micrometer; AFAIK, lots of cells have to fold to get through them. Because of that, this 'ingestible' claim aims more at stuff working in your guts than at stuff making it into the bloodstream that way.
- damian2000 14y ago
  Its funny that when the word cyborg is mentioned, you immediately think about people with obvious physical enhancements, but micro machines like this would basically be invisible to other people.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
Kliment 14y ago
ARM processors on that scale (2.17x2.32mm package) are commercially available today. The LPC1102LVUK from NXP for example. I don't really see why a chip that is only marginally smaller (1.9x2mm) and not available anywhere is getting this much attention.
- drhayes9 14y ago
  Forgive my ignorance if I missed your point, but this is more of a SOC than just a processor; from the article: "The KL02 has 32k of flash memory, 4k of RAM, a 32 bit processor, and peripherals like a 12-bit analog to digital converter and a low-power UART built into the chip."
  - wzdd 14y ago
    The LPC1102LVUK is a microcontroller, just like the KLO2. 8K SRAM, 32K Flash on-chip, ADC, UART, SPI, built-in oscillator, GPIOs, etc.
  - Kliment 14y ago
    The LPC1102 has more or less all of those things as well. The ADC is not as high resolution, but that's really it. You can head over to Mouser and buy it for a couple of dollars and use it immediately (product number 771-LPC1102UK118). In comparison, the chip mentioned in the article is essentially a one-off run for a specific unnamed customer, and does not, for all practical purposes, exist to mere mortals like us.
- mercuryrising 14y ago
  Wow! Those are teeny! I've never seen microcontrollers that small. That'd make a pretty nice sized Arduino if Atmel made 328's that size. Same Kliment from #reprap?
  - microtherion 14y ago
    They do, more or less. http://www.atmel.com/devices/ATtiny1634.aspx http://www.atmel.com/devices/ATtiny1634.aspx
Tekker 14y ago
The chip is small, but the USB connection is a b*tch. Really, though, it gives rise to other potential dangers (not that that's a reason to not do it). Imagine a USB flash drive with a full computer behind it (but so small you'd not know it was there). There are real uses that would benefit greatly from this, such as artificial eyes that could do whole image processing and send it on to the brain.
- shocks 14y ago
  Google Glass 2? :)
  - shocks 14y ago
    Definitely a comment worthy of down votes.
- fennecfoxen 14y ago
  Imagine a USB flash drive with a full computer behind it? http://www.fxitech.com/ http://www.fxitech.com/ Is $200.
  - cookingrobot 14y ago
    $34 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008BFXOZE http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008BFXOZE
thelucky41 14y ago
The article's title, "Freescale’s Insanely Tiny ARM Chip Will Put the Internet of Things Inside Your Body" is entirely misleading. Has the IoT term really been watered down this much from its technical definition? The chip in question lacks the power necessary to support a full IP stack, which is necessary for there to be integrated with other things in an Internet. Perhaps the chip is marketed with a communication application in mind, but having devices talk to each other does not make it an Internet of Things.
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  Has the IoT term really been watered down this much from its technical definition? It happens to all sorts of good words; I cease to be surprised.
- vardump 14y ago
  You don't need a full IP stack in order to do something useful. 32 kB flash and 4 kB RAM is more than enough for basic IP-networking. http://www.rowley.co.uk/msp430/uip.htm http://www.rowley.co.uk/msp430/uip.htm - requires less than 2 kB RAM, 12916 bytes of flash. http://dunkels.com/adam/miniweb/ http://dunkels.com/adam/miniweb/ - a minimal "web server", supports only one connection at a time among other restrictions. But it needs only 30 bytes of RAM. Yes, 30 bytes, not kilobytes.
  - adunk 14y ago
    Author of miniweb and uIP here. uIP is a real IPv4 stack, with all the needed bells and whistles, but miniweb really is only a super-specific proof-of-concept that is not particularly useful for anything else than demonstrating that it can be done. While something like uIP definitely can be used (and is being used) for IoT applications, uIP only is an IPv4 endpoint. Most IoT applications have a wireless communication medium which by its nature is fluctuating and unpredictable, so you'll typically want to have support for a self-healing wireless mesh network. Such a mesh network adds a bit of complexity, code footprint, and memory usage. And since existing low-power meshing standards like IETF RPL are defined for IPv6 and not IPv4, you need to have support for IPv6 as well. So in the end, the nice and small footprint of uIP will have grown. Also, the footprint for uIP given on the Rowley page are for the stack alone, and does not include things like radio drivers or an OS scheduler. For a full-mesh low-power IPv6 IoT system, a more realistic figure is what we have in Thingsquare Mist (http://thingsquare.com/mist/ http://thingsquare.com/mist/), where mesh nodes with a full Contiki OS and IPv6 support have a code footprint closer to 50k than 12k. That said, we have successfully been running Thingsquare Mist on devices with 32k flash and 4k RAM, like the KL02 ARM device in the article. But this has been for non-mesh fringe nodes that only used UDP/IPv6 multicasts to communicate with its immediate neighbors, and no mesh networking.
IheartApplesDix 14y ago
Talk about Trusted Platforms, how do I add the FDA's signing cert to my immune system?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
lightblade 14y ago
Now, just strap a 2 pound battery to it and you'll be set.
- damian2000 14y ago
  It would be good if they could figure out a way to use our body's electricity, no idea how though.
  - aeontech 14y ago
    There are studies underway about converting body glucose into electricity. Fascinating stuff. http://www.cbc.ca/strombo/technology-1/powered-by-lobster-scientists-generate-electricity-from-living-beings.html http://www.cbc.ca/strombo/technology-1/powered-by-lobster-sc...
akurilin 14y ago
I feel that at this point the bottleneck is our ability to safely and reversibly enhance human bodies with all of the amazing technology we've created in the past few decades. Maybe this has always been the case, but it seems ever more so now. I can certainly foresee future technology visionaries' frustration with having amazing nano-scale machines with which they want to experiment and push humanity's boundaries, but no way to guarantee that there won't be severe consequence to one's health on the long term.

77 points by zaaaaz 14y ago

Interesting. Freescale's original press release didn't mention that the chip was designed for swallowable computers: http://media.freescale.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=196520&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1789231 http://media.freescale.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=196520&p=irol...

ignostic 14y ago

These small developments are hugely exciting to me, primarily because they move us a little closer to the inevitable future of biological machines in our bodies. Imagine little robots that crawl through your veins clearing out cholesterol, or hunting down cancer cells and signaling the immune system to attack them. We'll get there - probably sooner than most people think.

Someone 14y ago
I think that, if we mamage to do that, the biochemists will win that race, not the lithographers. Veins have the (for this goal) unfortunate property of repeatedly splitting into less wide veins. I think macrophages are the largest cells in the blood; they typically are 20 micrometer or 2E-5m in diameter. To get there, this thing would have to shrink by a factor of 100 linearly, or 10,000 in area. That's about 13 Moore's law iterations or 20-ish years. I doubt we will get those from silicon. And that's ignoring the fact that capillaries are 5-10 micrometer; AFAIK, lots of cells have to fold to get through them. Because of that, this 'ingestible' claim aims more at stuff working in your guts than at stuff making it into the bloodstream that way.
damian2000 14y ago
Its funny that when the word cyborg is mentioned, you immediately think about people with obvious physical enhancements, but micro machines like this would basically be invisible to other people.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

Kliment 14y ago

ARM processors on that scale (2.17x2.32mm package) are commercially available today. The LPC1102LVUK from NXP for example. I don't really see why a chip that is only marginally smaller (1.9x2mm) and not available anywhere is getting this much attention.

drhayes9 14y ago
Forgive my ignorance if I missed your point, but this is more of a SOC than just a processor; from the article: "The KL02 has 32k of flash memory, 4k of RAM, a 32 bit processor, and peripherals like a 12-bit analog to digital converter and a low-power UART built into the chip."
- wzdd 14y ago
  The LPC1102LVUK is a microcontroller, just like the KLO2. 8K SRAM, 32K Flash on-chip, ADC, UART, SPI, built-in oscillator, GPIOs, etc.
- Kliment 14y ago
  The LPC1102 has more or less all of those things as well. The ADC is not as high resolution, but that's really it. You can head over to Mouser and buy it for a couple of dollars and use it immediately (product number 771-LPC1102UK118). In comparison, the chip mentioned in the article is essentially a one-off run for a specific unnamed customer, and does not, for all practical purposes, exist to mere mortals like us.
mercuryrising 14y ago
Wow! Those are teeny! I've never seen microcontrollers that small. That'd make a pretty nice sized Arduino if Atmel made 328's that size. Same Kliment from #reprap?
- microtherion 14y ago
  They do, more or less. http://www.atmel.com/devices/ATtiny1634.aspx http://www.atmel.com/devices/ATtiny1634.aspx

Tekker 14y ago

The chip is small, but the USB connection is a b*tch. Really, though, it gives rise to other potential dangers (not that that's a reason to not do it). Imagine a USB flash drive with a full computer behind it (but so small you'd not know it was there). There are real uses that would benefit greatly from this, such as artificial eyes that could do whole image processing and send it on to the brain.

shocks 14y ago
Google Glass 2? :)
- shocks 14y ago
  Definitely a comment worthy of down votes.
fennecfoxen 14y ago
Imagine a USB flash drive with a full computer behind it? http://www.fxitech.com/ http://www.fxitech.com/ Is $200.
- cookingrobot 14y ago
  $34 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008BFXOZE http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008BFXOZE

thelucky41 14y ago

The article's title, "Freescale’s Insanely Tiny ARM Chip Will Put the Internet of Things Inside Your Body" is entirely misleading. Has the IoT term really been watered down this much from its technical definition? The chip in question lacks the power necessary to support a full IP stack, which is necessary for there to be integrated with other things in an Internet. Perhaps the chip is marketed with a communication application in mind, but having devices talk to each other does not make it an Internet of Things.

sliverstorm 14y ago
Has the IoT term really been watered down this much from its technical definition? It happens to all sorts of good words; I cease to be surprised.
vardump 14y ago
You don't need a full IP stack in order to do something useful. 32 kB flash and 4 kB RAM is more than enough for basic IP-networking. http://www.rowley.co.uk/msp430/uip.htm http://www.rowley.co.uk/msp430/uip.htm - requires less than 2 kB RAM, 12916 bytes of flash. http://dunkels.com/adam/miniweb/ http://dunkels.com/adam/miniweb/ - a minimal "web server", supports only one connection at a time among other restrictions. But it needs only 30 bytes of RAM. Yes, 30 bytes, not kilobytes.
- adunk 14y ago
  Author of miniweb and uIP here. uIP is a real IPv4 stack, with all the needed bells and whistles, but miniweb really is only a super-specific proof-of-concept that is not particularly useful for anything else than demonstrating that it can be done. While something like uIP definitely can be used (and is being used) for IoT applications, uIP only is an IPv4 endpoint. Most IoT applications have a wireless communication medium which by its nature is fluctuating and unpredictable, so you'll typically want to have support for a self-healing wireless mesh network. Such a mesh network adds a bit of complexity, code footprint, and memory usage. And since existing low-power meshing standards like IETF RPL are defined for IPv6 and not IPv4, you need to have support for IPv6 as well. So in the end, the nice and small footprint of uIP will have grown. Also, the footprint for uIP given on the Rowley page are for the stack alone, and does not include things like radio drivers or an OS scheduler. For a full-mesh low-power IPv6 IoT system, a more realistic figure is what we have in Thingsquare Mist (http://thingsquare.com/mist/ http://thingsquare.com/mist/), where mesh nodes with a full Contiki OS and IPv6 support have a code footprint closer to 50k than 12k. That said, we have successfully been running Thingsquare Mist on devices with 32k flash and 4k RAM, like the KL02 ARM device in the article. But this has been for non-mesh fringe nodes that only used UDP/IPv6 multicasts to communicate with its immediate neighbors, and no mesh networking.

IheartApplesDix 14y ago

Talk about Trusted Platforms, how do I add the FDA's signing cert to my immune system?

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

lightblade 14y ago

Now, just strap a 2 pound battery to it and you'll be set.

damian2000 14y ago
It would be good if they could figure out a way to use our body's electricity, no idea how though.
- aeontech 14y ago
  There are studies underway about converting body glucose into electricity. Fascinating stuff. http://www.cbc.ca/strombo/technology-1/powered-by-lobster-scientists-generate-electricity-from-living-beings.html http://www.cbc.ca/strombo/technology-1/powered-by-lobster-sc...

akurilin 14y ago

I feel that at this point the bottleneck is our ability to safely and reversibly enhance human bodies with all of the amazing technology we've created in the past few decades. Maybe this has always been the case, but it seems ever more so now. I can certainly foresee future technology visionaries' frustration with having amazing nano-scale machines with which they want to experiment and push humanity's boundaries, but no way to guarantee that there won't be severe consequence to one's health on the long term.