World's Smallest Computer System Being Developed
The University of Michigan researchers are developing what is believed to be the first complete millimeter-scale computing system, smallest till now. Its about the size of the letter “N” on the back of a penny!
This computing system, a pressure monitor believed to be smallest till now, is designed so that it can be implanted in the eye to track the progress of glaucoma (a potentially blinding disease). It was revealed through a paper presented by the team of Professors- Dennis Sylvester and David Blaauw, and assistant professor David Wentzloff of Univ. of Michigan at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), in San Francisco. The device is expected to be out for sell in several years from now.
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"When you get smaller than hand-held devices, you turn to these monitoring devices," Blaauw said. "The next big challenge is to achieve millimeter-scale systems, which have a host of new applications for monitoring our bodies, our environment and our buildings. Because they're so small, you could manufacture hundreds of thousands on one wafer. There could be 10s to 100s of them per person and it's this per capita increase that fuels the semiconductor industry's growth."
The complete package, which has a volume just over 1 cubic millimeter, has an ultra low-power microprocessor, a pressure sensor, memory, a thin-film battery, a solar cell and a wireless radio with an antenna that can transmit data to an external reader device that would be held near the eye.
The system takes the measurements after every 15 minutes and consumes an average power of about 5.3 nanowatts. The thin-film battery is charged by exposure to light. It takes about 10 hours exposure to indoor light and 1.5 hours of sunlight to get charged. The memory can store measurement reading of one complete week. Attempts are still being made to reduce the power consumption.
Right now, the team is working on the system for medical applications like it can be placed at different parts of the body for monitoring various processes. But for the system of such a small size, applications are infinite!
The development of this millimeter scale system is again proving the Moore’s law & the Bell’s Law right. Moore's says “the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles every two years”. The Bell’s Law says there's a new class of smaller, cheaper computers about every decade. With each new class, the volume shrinks by two orders of magnitude and the number of systems per person increases. The law has held till now, from 1960s' mainframes through the '80s' PCs, the '90s' notebooks and the new millennium's smart phones!
If these laws are held true in the upcoming years, one day we may have a computer system that won’t be even visible to the naked eye!
Source: Umich News Service
This computing system, a pressure monitor believed to be smallest till now, is designed so that it can be implanted in the eye to track the progress of glaucoma (a potentially blinding disease). It was revealed through a paper presented by the team of Professors- Dennis Sylvester and David Blaauw, and assistant professor David Wentzloff of Univ. of Michigan at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), in San Francisco. The device is expected to be out for sell in several years from now.
"When you get smaller than hand-held devices, you turn to these monitoring devices," Blaauw said. "The next big challenge is to achieve millimeter-scale systems, which have a host of new applications for monitoring our bodies, our environment and our buildings. Because they're so small, you could manufacture hundreds of thousands on one wafer. There could be 10s to 100s of them per person and it's this per capita increase that fuels the semiconductor industry's growth."
The complete package, which has a volume just over 1 cubic millimeter, has an ultra low-power microprocessor, a pressure sensor, memory, a thin-film battery, a solar cell and a wireless radio with an antenna that can transmit data to an external reader device that would be held near the eye.
The system takes the measurements after every 15 minutes and consumes an average power of about 5.3 nanowatts. The thin-film battery is charged by exposure to light. It takes about 10 hours exposure to indoor light and 1.5 hours of sunlight to get charged. The memory can store measurement reading of one complete week. Attempts are still being made to reduce the power consumption.
Right now, the team is working on the system for medical applications like it can be placed at different parts of the body for monitoring various processes. But for the system of such a small size, applications are infinite!
The development of this millimeter scale system is again proving the Moore’s law & the Bell’s Law right. Moore's says “the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles every two years”. The Bell’s Law says there's a new class of smaller, cheaper computers about every decade. With each new class, the volume shrinks by two orders of magnitude and the number of systems per person increases. The law has held till now, from 1960s' mainframes through the '80s' PCs, the '90s' notebooks and the new millennium's smart phones!
If these laws are held true in the upcoming years, one day we may have a computer system that won’t be even visible to the naked eye!
Source: Umich News Service
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