7 ms·

Michigan Micro Mote – World's Smallest Computer

290 points by saticmotion 11y ago

unwind 11y ago
This is really cool. The article is pretty light on the technical details about the actual processor architecture. I think their choice of naming is unfortunate, confusion with ARM's Cortex-M3 is quite likely. Or are you supposed to pronounce this "M to the third" or something? Update: D'oh, of course it's "M-cubed". I knew that, I blame not being a native speaker for not thinking about it. :)
- Quanticles 11y ago
  They usually pronounce it "M-cubed", which is also unfortunate because the university started some sort of research program (also called "M-cubed") a while after that name got engrained
  - rhinoceraptor 11y ago
    It probably doesn't help that Ann Arbor is called A^2.
- giodamelio 11y ago
  I would go with "M cubed"
- saticmotion 11y ago
  I think you might be able to find more details on Blaauw's website[0]. I've also found a page with their publications[1] [0]http://blaauw.eecs.umich.edu/project.php http://blaauw.eecs.umich.edu/project.php [1]http://blaauw.eecs.umich.edu/resource.php?grp=1 http://blaauw.eecs.umich.edu/resource.php?grp=1
  - walterbell 11y ago
    From that list, a 2013 overview of the platform (pdf): http://blaauw.eecs.umich.edu/getFile.php?id=498 http://blaauw.eecs.umich.edu/getFile.php?id=498 AnnArbor SmartZone funding, http://www.a2gov.org/departments/finance-admin-services/smart-zone/Pages/Home.aspx http://www.a2gov.org/departments/finance-admin-services/smar... U of M test track for smart/autonomous cars, http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2014/03/university_of_michigan_approve_3.html http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2014/03/univer...
- 13 11y ago
  I didn't even consider that this might not be ARM. There's Cortex M0, M1, M3, M4 you'd be silly to call a product M^3 if it wasn't related. If not it would be lawsuit fodder because it certainly sounds too related to be coincidental.
- xgbi 11y ago
  Processor description is here: http://www.ee.columbia.edu/~mgseok/pdfs/phoenix_isscc_dac_design_contest.pdf http://www.ee.columbia.edu/~mgseok/pdfs/phoenix_isscc_dac_de... I'm not sure it's an ARM..
  - unwind 11y ago
    Thanks! No, it's definitely not ARM, that was my point. It seems to consist of "8-bit CPU, a 52x40-bit DMEM, a 64x10-bit IMEM, a 64x10-bit IROM". Those are some seriously small memory sizes, a total of 64 instructions (the IROM holds the code) really isn't a lot to play with.
    - ansible 11y ago
      Yes. Though if the silicon process technology is as good as they claim, then scaling that up a little bit (to be on-par with conventional 8-bit micros) won't be too bad. It will be interesting to see if they can maintain the kind of leakage they're talking about with a smaller process size.
RobertoG 11y ago
Very cool. The pessimist (realist?) in me can't avoid remembering Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky" novel, where the perfect surveillance device is a network of "dust computers".
- joshstrange 11y ago
  Love that book, it also reminded me of his book/short story Fast Times at Fairmont High where they use small devices like this as breadcrumbs to keep them connected to the grid (a mesh network).
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    The book is Rainbows End.
    - joshstrange 11y ago
      Ahh, my bad, he did have a short story called Fast Times at Fairmont High that was related to/in the same universe as Rainbows End. I've read both. Great author. From Wikipedia [0]: > Vinge's 2006 novel, Rainbows End, set in a similar universe to Fast Times at Fairmont High, won the 2007 Hugo Award for Best Novel. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge
- rmhsilva 11y ago
  Or the "EDust" (everything dust) assassin in Iain M. Banks' novel "Look To Windward"... That said, this is awesome. Next step - useful actuation on the same scale.
- vidarh 11y ago
  That may be so, but imagine when they get cheap enough that e.g. NSA installations must be kept at ridiculous cleanroom conditions because every speck of dust may be conducting counter-surveillance, or automatically dump footage onto Youtube.
  - 11y ago
IgorPartola 11y ago
So there would literally be a microchip in my brain?! All kidding aside, this is cool.
- Raphmedia 11y ago
  "So there could literally be a microchip in my brain?!" Fixed that for you.
  - Raphmedia 11y ago
    Can't edit, so here's an explanation. I didn't mean to say that I fixed the grammar. I meant it as in there could actually be a microchip in your brain right now. The tech exists.
    - sfeng 11y ago
      The limitation is effective communication to/from the organic parts of your brain.
giodamelio 11y ago
This is really cool. Running off of ambient light! I am looking forward to what they can do with swarms of them.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  I was waiting for a project to attempt "perpetual" powering. Next: harvesting human heat ?
  - pjc50 11y ago
    Heat harvesting is tricky because it depends on temperature difference, so you need to keep the hot side and the cold side sufficiently far apart.
    - ansible 11y ago
      And you need some kind of heat engine to extract useful work from the difference. These typically have a significant size/mass associated with them. I think solar cells are the way to go for now, though vibration harvesting can work for some applications.
      - pharke 11y ago
        No engine required https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_effect
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_%28novel%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_%28novel%29 - Michael Crichton's novel anticipating swarms of nanobots.
- LesZedCB 11y ago
  > I am looking forward to what _they_ can do I also think these are incredibly cool! I want to be able to play with these and pick them up at the store like an arduino. The internet of things is hardly internet connected Nest home systems, though of course those count. There are a lot of hackers (in the maker sense) who would eat these things up and come up with amazing uses that academia simply doesn't have the manpower to supply. I wish hardware wasn't so hard to bootstrap, so we could get these things out en masse quickly.
fit2rule 11y ago
Dust-computing is upon us. All hail the holy grey goo! Seriously though, I wonder what the setback is with using energy harvesting in general - or are we just at the beginning of the wave of energy harvesting revolution? http://www.st.com/web/en/press/p3498 http://www.st.com/web/en/press/p3498 http://www.linear.com/products/energy_harvesting http://www.linear.com/products/energy_harvesting
- minthd 11y ago
  I think that in most cases, using a rechargeable battery is cheaper - and cheaper leads in most areas of embedded systems.Also most embedded systems need power for something like motor/lcd/relay/etc and energy harvesting cannot supply enough energy for that - and the issue of wireless connectivity of such networks is only partially solved and not yet mature i think. And even the micro-controllers are only half way there. Also the places that could use energy harvesting are sensors networks in industry and building, and those are quite conservative industries(for good reasons) and they greatly care about reliability, and also the field of sensor networks for industry is not fully developed with applications like predictive maintenance are quite new. Same goes for the medical industry , where such sensors could be valuable.
ithkuil 11y ago
I'm having troubles finding the actual spec (e.g. size of ram, rom etc). Anyone has more info about it?
- snops 11y ago
  From the pdf walterbell linked to,section "System Overview": >...two ARM® Cortex-M0 processors are located in separate layers with different functionality as follows: >The DSP CPU efficiently handles data streaming from the imager (or other sensors), thus is built in 65nm CMOS (Layer 3) with a large 16kB non-retentive SRAM (NRSRAM). >The CTRL CPU manages the system using an always-on 3kB retentive SRAM (RSRAM) to maintain the stored operating program, and is built in low leakage 180nm CMOS. For ROM, the CTRL CPU just always keeps its SRAM powered. I can't seem to find the CPU frequencies, but I would imagine they are very low, as a previous slightly larger version in 2010 had a Cortex M3 working at 1MHz max[1]. [1]http://blaauw.eecs.umich.edu/getFile.php?id=394 http://blaauw.eecs.umich.edu/getFile.php?id=394
ayuvar 11y ago
And I thought it was hard to find my phone now. But seriously, ambient light harvesting and (eventually) a 20 meter communication range are the coolest parts of all this. Ignoring the "smart swarm" applications I could see these being generally useful as an alternative to JTAG for other really small devices.
grandalf 11y ago
Is this named in homage to this? http://www.qsl.net/wb5ude/kc6wdk/transmitter.html http://www.qsl.net/wb5ude/kc6wdk/transmitter.html
bastomi29 11y ago
http://mendakigunung.soup.io/post/565100225/Mendaki-Gunung-Semeru-Puncak-Mahameru http://mendakigunung.soup.io/post/565100225/Mendaki-Gunung-S...
nsxwolf 11y ago
Can't wait for the Arduino equivalent of one of these.
trynumber9 11y ago
In the linked paper, they describe their choice of 180nm as optimal for power. Given the tools they used, they could make an even smaller computer with 130nm or 90nm technology. But the power draw would be higher according to the graph. Or they could add more memory instead of a smaller size. The CPU is absolutely tiny, not much larger than the temperature sensor.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
krapht 11y ago
Smaller, lower power computers are great. But the problem is, and remains, the power consumption of the RF channel. It's all well and good that your processor consumes microamps, but one second of WiFi traffic at a reasonable transmit power takes hundreds of milliamps. Smart sensing system's power consumption is dominated by wireless communication energy costs.
- ethbro 11y ago
  > It's all well and good that your processor consumes microamps, but one second of WiFi traffic at a reasonable transmit power takes hundreds of milliamps. Early cell phones took an exceptional amount of power as well. Not simply because they were earlier tech, but because the nearest tower might be 20 miles away. Mesh networking is going to be the new black if Io(miniature)T really takes off.
- dazmax 11y ago
  What if you put a receiving antenna in every power outlet, light switch, and light fixture – then you could use these throughout the building.
saganus 11y ago
Stretching this a bit, when someone marriages this with the MIT things that auto-assemble... we'll risk getting some sort of Stargate's Asurans race, which are based on nanites. Self-assembling nanobots [0]. Of course this is just sci-fi... but nonetheless... [0]http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Asuran http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Asuran

290 points by saticmotion 11y ago

This is really cool. The article is pretty light on the technical details about the actual processor architecture. I think their choice of naming is unfortunate, confusion with ARM's Cortex-M3 is quite likely. Or are you supposed to pronounce this "M to the third" or something? Update: D'oh, of course it's "M-cubed". I knew that, I blame not being a native speaker for not thinking about it. :)

Quanticles 11y ago
They usually pronounce it "M-cubed", which is also unfortunate because the university started some sort of research program (also called "M-cubed") a while after that name got engrained
- rhinoceraptor 11y ago
  It probably doesn't help that Ann Arbor is called A^2.
giodamelio 11y ago
I would go with "M cubed"
saticmotion 11y ago
I think you might be able to find more details on Blaauw's website[0]. I've also found a page with their publications[1] [0]http://blaauw.eecs.umich.edu/project.php http://blaauw.eecs.umich.edu/project.php [1]http://blaauw.eecs.umich.edu/resource.php?grp=1 http://blaauw.eecs.umich.edu/resource.php?grp=1
- walterbell 11y ago
  From that list, a 2013 overview of the platform (pdf): http://blaauw.eecs.umich.edu/getFile.php?id=498 http://blaauw.eecs.umich.edu/getFile.php?id=498 AnnArbor SmartZone funding, http://www.a2gov.org/departments/finance-admin-services/smart-zone/Pages/Home.aspx http://www.a2gov.org/departments/finance-admin-services/smar... U of M test track for smart/autonomous cars, http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2014/03/university_of_michigan_approve_3.html http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2014/03/univer...
13 11y ago
I didn't even consider that this might not be ARM. There's Cortex M0, M1, M3, M4 you'd be silly to call a product M^3 if it wasn't related. If not it would be lawsuit fodder because it certainly sounds too related to be coincidental.
xgbi 11y ago
Processor description is here: http://www.ee.columbia.edu/~mgseok/pdfs/phoenix_isscc_dac_design_contest.pdf http://www.ee.columbia.edu/~mgseok/pdfs/phoenix_isscc_dac_de... I'm not sure it's an ARM..
- unwind 11y ago
  Thanks! No, it's definitely not ARM, that was my point. It seems to consist of "8-bit CPU, a 52x40-bit DMEM, a 64x10-bit IMEM, a 64x10-bit IROM". Those are some seriously small memory sizes, a total of 64 instructions (the IROM holds the code) really isn't a lot to play with.
  - ansible 11y ago
    Yes. Though if the silicon process technology is as good as they claim, then scaling that up a little bit (to be on-par with conventional 8-bit micros) won't be too bad. It will be interesting to see if they can maintain the kind of leakage they're talking about with a smaller process size.

RobertoG 11y ago

Very cool. The pessimist (realist?) in me can't avoid remembering Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky" novel, where the perfect surveillance device is a network of "dust computers".

joshstrange 11y ago
Love that book, it also reminded me of his book/short story Fast Times at Fairmont High where they use small devices like this as breadcrumbs to keep them connected to the grid (a mesh network).
- maxerickson 11y ago
  The book is Rainbows End.
  - joshstrange 11y ago
    Ahh, my bad, he did have a short story called Fast Times at Fairmont High that was related to/in the same universe as Rainbows End. I've read both. Great author. From Wikipedia [0]: > Vinge's 2006 novel, Rainbows End, set in a similar universe to Fast Times at Fairmont High, won the 2007 Hugo Award for Best Novel. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge
rmhsilva 11y ago
Or the "EDust" (everything dust) assassin in Iain M. Banks' novel "Look To Windward"... That said, this is awesome. Next step - useful actuation on the same scale.
vidarh 11y ago
That may be so, but imagine when they get cheap enough that e.g. NSA installations must be kept at ridiculous cleanroom conditions because every speck of dust may be conducting counter-surveillance, or automatically dump footage onto Youtube.
- 11y ago

IgorPartola 11y ago

So there would literally be a microchip in my brain?! All kidding aside, this is cool.

Raphmedia 11y ago
"So there could literally be a microchip in my brain?!" Fixed that for you.
- Raphmedia 11y ago
  Can't edit, so here's an explanation. I didn't mean to say that I fixed the grammar. I meant it as in there could actually be a microchip in your brain right now. The tech exists.
  - sfeng 11y ago
    The limitation is effective communication to/from the organic parts of your brain.

giodamelio 11y ago

This is really cool. Running off of ambient light! I am looking forward to what they can do with swarms of them.

agumonkey 11y ago
I was waiting for a project to attempt "perpetual" powering. Next: harvesting human heat ?
- pjc50 11y ago
  Heat harvesting is tricky because it depends on temperature difference, so you need to keep the hot side and the cold side sufficiently far apart.
  - ansible 11y ago
    And you need some kind of heat engine to extract useful work from the difference. These typically have a significant size/mass associated with them. I think solar cells are the way to go for now, though vibration harvesting can work for some applications.
    - pharke 11y ago
      No engine required https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_effect
pbhjpbhj 11y ago
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_%28novel%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_%28novel%29 - Michael Crichton's novel anticipating swarms of nanobots.
LesZedCB 11y ago
> I am looking forward to what _they_ can do I also think these are incredibly cool! I want to be able to play with these and pick them up at the store like an arduino. The internet of things is hardly internet connected Nest home systems, though of course those count. There are a lot of hackers (in the maker sense) who would eat these things up and come up with amazing uses that academia simply doesn't have the manpower to supply. I wish hardware wasn't so hard to bootstrap, so we could get these things out en masse quickly.

fit2rule 11y ago

Dust-computing is upon us. All hail the holy grey goo! Seriously though, I wonder what the setback is with using energy harvesting in general - or are we just at the beginning of the wave of energy harvesting revolution? http://www.st.com/web/en/press/p3498 http://www.st.com/web/en/press/p3498 http://www.linear.com/products/energy_harvesting http://www.linear.com/products/energy_harvesting

minthd 11y ago
I think that in most cases, using a rechargeable battery is cheaper - and cheaper leads in most areas of embedded systems.Also most embedded systems need power for something like motor/lcd/relay/etc and energy harvesting cannot supply enough energy for that - and the issue of wireless connectivity of such networks is only partially solved and not yet mature i think. And even the micro-controllers are only half way there. Also the places that could use energy harvesting are sensors networks in industry and building, and those are quite conservative industries(for good reasons) and they greatly care about reliability, and also the field of sensor networks for industry is not fully developed with applications like predictive maintenance are quite new. Same goes for the medical industry , where such sensors could be valuable.

ithkuil 11y ago

I'm having troubles finding the actual spec (e.g. size of ram, rom etc). Anyone has more info about it?

snops 11y ago
From the pdf walterbell linked to,section "System Overview": >...two ARM® Cortex-M0 processors are located in separate layers with different functionality as follows: >The DSP CPU efficiently handles data streaming from the imager (or other sensors), thus is built in 65nm CMOS (Layer 3) with a large 16kB non-retentive SRAM (NRSRAM). >The CTRL CPU manages the system using an always-on 3kB retentive SRAM (RSRAM) to maintain the stored operating program, and is built in low leakage 180nm CMOS. For ROM, the CTRL CPU just always keeps its SRAM powered. I can't seem to find the CPU frequencies, but I would imagine they are very low, as a previous slightly larger version in 2010 had a Cortex M3 working at 1MHz max[1]. [1]http://blaauw.eecs.umich.edu/getFile.php?id=394 http://blaauw.eecs.umich.edu/getFile.php?id=394

ayuvar 11y ago

And I thought it was hard to find my phone now. But seriously, ambient light harvesting and (eventually) a 20 meter communication range are the coolest parts of all this. Ignoring the "smart swarm" applications I could see these being generally useful as an alternative to JTAG for other really small devices.

grandalf 11y ago

Is this named in homage to this? http://www.qsl.net/wb5ude/kc6wdk/transmitter.html http://www.qsl.net/wb5ude/kc6wdk/transmitter.html

bastomi29 11y ago

http://mendakigunung.soup.io/post/565100225/Mendaki-Gunung-Semeru-Puncak-Mahameru http://mendakigunung.soup.io/post/565100225/Mendaki-Gunung-S...

nsxwolf 11y ago

Can't wait for the Arduino equivalent of one of these.

trynumber9 11y ago

In the linked paper, they describe their choice of 180nm as optimal for power. Given the tools they used, they could make an even smaller computer with 130nm or 90nm technology. But the power draw would be higher according to the graph. Or they could add more memory instead of a smaller size. The CPU is absolutely tiny, not much larger than the temperature sensor.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

krapht 11y ago

Smaller, lower power computers are great. But the problem is, and remains, the power consumption of the RF channel. It's all well and good that your processor consumes microamps, but one second of WiFi traffic at a reasonable transmit power takes hundreds of milliamps. Smart sensing system's power consumption is dominated by wireless communication energy costs.

ethbro 11y ago
> It's all well and good that your processor consumes microamps, but one second of WiFi traffic at a reasonable transmit power takes hundreds of milliamps. Early cell phones took an exceptional amount of power as well. Not simply because they were earlier tech, but because the nearest tower might be 20 miles away. Mesh networking is going to be the new black if Io(miniature)T really takes off.
dazmax 11y ago
What if you put a receiving antenna in every power outlet, light switch, and light fixture – then you could use these throughout the building.

saganus 11y ago

Stretching this a bit, when someone marriages this with the MIT things that auto-assemble... we'll risk getting some sort of Stargate's Asurans race, which are based on nanites. Self-assembling nanobots [0]. Of course this is just sci-fi... but nonetheless... [0]http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Asuran http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Asuran