
The Crazy-Tiny Next Generation of Computers (2015) - apsec112
https://medium.com/backchannel/the-crazy-tiny-next-generation-of-computers-17e89e472839
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segfaultbuserr
Like all new technologies, environmental and health hazards are usually
learned in a hard and painful way. For example, I love the history of
semiconductor development, but simultaneously, I also recognize that a large
number of semiconductor fabs in the 1970s operated by Intel, AMD, Fairchild,
HP, National, Commodore, etc, are now superfund sites. At many sites, cleanup
works are still ongoing today. And usually it was not a result of malice, but
inexperience - many operational and regulatory safeguards were simply not
established - in fact, many leaks were only discovered decades later. I
summarized some of these incidents in a HN commment at [0] if you are
interested.

Following the same line of thought, I wonder how dangerous dust-scale
computing is, biologically and environmentally. In general, there are a lot of
ongoing research projects on the safety of nanomaterials, and have already
showed the potential hazards cannot be ignored [1]. In the particular case, it
appears to be just a relatively conventional MEMS chip that we are familiar
with, not some radically new and different nanomaterials, so [1] doesn't apply
here, but the question of "what will happen if these chips enter the
environment (air, soil, water) and biosphere" remains, especially if these are
going to be used at an industrial scale, and will be intentionally introduced
to the environment for remote sensing. The worse case scenario - as bad as
plastic in the 20th century?

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23186842](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23186842)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_and_safety_hazards_of_n...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_and_safety_hazards_of_nanomaterials)

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anitil
That comment of yours is great. It's amazing how much damage can be caused by
these leaks. A bit frustrating given that the tank's only job is to not leak.

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segfaultbuserr
A related article on the health effects of these TCE leaks in the Silicon
Valley.

* In Search of the Cookie Dough Tree

[https://web.archive.org/web/20130523092702/https://www.aaron...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130523092702/https://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/essay.html?id=88)

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rkagerer
I'd love to buy compute power by the millilitre.

What do you think are today's major roadblocks to dust-scale computing? e.g.
Power harvesting and storage? Scaling down activators for motes to "get
around" and "do things"? Tooling to coordinate thousands of nodes on a common
task? Bugs (as in insects that might eat your node)?

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II2II
> What do you think are today's major roadblocks to dust-scale computing?

Feather dusters and vacuum cleaners.

More seriously: this is the type of technology that likely has few
applications on it's own, but will probably find its way into something
bigger.

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supernova87a
What do we do when every dust mote is sensing and giving off wifi signals in
our houses?

