
Arm unveils 1mm x 1mm 32bit chip: "years of battery life" - replax
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/technology-17345934
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acqq
ARM Cortex M0+ processor specs:

[http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-m/cortex-m0plu...](http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-m/cortex-m0plus.php)

Advantages over 8-bit and 16-bit processors for embedded solutions, according
to ARM:

[http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-m/cortex-m0plu...](http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-m/cortex-m0plus.php?tab=Moving+from+8/16-bit)

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keenerd
Interesting that they only make comparisons with PIC and 8051. AVR still blows
them away on many angles; particularly energy efficiency, community, ease of
use on not-windows, and price. (MSP430 too, for efficiency and price.)

I'm fooling around with the lower power ARM chips on weekends, and they seem
like a great option when you really want to shoehorn in a full operating
system somewhere.

~~~
wtvanhest
I don't understand the connection on why we need such an efficient chip for
implementation in devices which are plugged in.

If the economic benefits were so strong for those devices being connected that
should have already happened.

What am I missing?

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ssmall
You really don't care as much when its got mains power but not all of these
devices are plugged in. You will see them a lot in simple hand held consumer
electronics like garage door openers, remote controllers, wireless mouses,
kitchen timers and so on. In battery powered devices saving a mA make a world
of difference.

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mbell
mA may matter for something like a phone but really the war in the 8bit space
is over uA and nA.

Many 8bit mcus end in places where their battery is expected to have a life
time measured in years. Last I looked I think MicroChip is leading the way
here in terms of sleep power. Their PIC XLP series only draws ~20nA while
sleeping.

There is more competition in the 16bit space with the MSP430 from TI.

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sambeau
ARM is a brilliant (if not the poster-boy) example of why the UK government
should be investing in new technology companies rather than car manufacturing
and banking.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
ARM employs about 2 000 people [1]. They're definitely a huge boon for the
British tech community and competitiveness, but justifying government support
for such a small employee base would be untenable.

[1] [http://www.arm.com/about/company-
profile/index.php?setcookie...](http://www.arm.com/about/company-
profile/index.php?setcookie=classic)

~~~
gaius
Northern Rock employed 5000.

~~~
nl
Bank bail-outs aren't about employment, they are about protecting people and
other business from losses in assets in the banks.

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tesseract
Seems like a fairly straightforward evolution, they are claiming 11.2uW/MHz
vs. 16 for the non-plus M0. Sounds like the instruction set is the same. I'm
curious whether the M0 has been getting significant design wins over the
established low-power microcontrollers like PIC, MSP430, etc.

~~~
regularfry
It looks like the trade-off is peripherals: the M0+ (as far as I can tell)
doesn't have the goodies a generic PIC at the same price-point does.

~~~
regularfry
Replying to myself: judging by the Freescale chips out there, the peripherals
will probably get added by IP integrators. Should be interesting.

~~~
tesseract
Yeah, that's how the ARM microcontroller market works. I imagine NXP's
peripheral set will be quite similar to the ones on their existing Cortex-M0
chips. Freescale will presumably base theirs on what's in their M4 parts,
albeit scaled down. For another point of reference you could look at STMicro's
Cortex-M0 implementation as well.

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jfasi
Well, strictly speaking the Cortex A9 is supposed to be 1mm x 1.5mm, but
that's:

1\. According to ARM's promotional materials. No corroboration from licensors,
as far as I'm aware.

2\. Without caches. If you look at those pretty pictures of Intel chips, those
huge swatches of regular rectangular stuff are caches, and they take up space.

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antipax
Hope that when the "smart grid" or whatever you want to call it does come
around, it comes with the electricity equivalent of net neutrality.

~~~
javert
Wow. Let's have government bureaucrats control not only how we use the Net,
but also when we can use our appliances!

Why not just use nuclear to produce abundant energy?

~~~
Symmetry
The idea behind a smart grid is usually some form of the local utility company
taking money off your electric bill if your appliances are smart about not
using energy at times of peak load. Nothing about the concept means the
government has to be involved.

~~~
javert
_Hope that when the "smart grid" or whatever you want to call it does come
around, it comes with the electricity equivalent of net neutrality._

The post I was responding to was specifically calling for it to be government
controlled.

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rwmj
Link to non-mobile site: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17345934>

I'm a bit surprised this hasn't been done before.

Can this chip be solar powered (I mean, obviously, with a small solar cell)?

~~~
justincormack
No reason why should not be solar powered. Around here all the parking meters
are solar powered, just for cost of installation reasons. Wiring electricity
in to 50bn devices would be a pain, unless they are electric anyway.

~~~
ht_th
Just curious, wouldn't a place that needs parking meters already be on the
grid? Assuming we use parking meters to earn back the costs of building the
parking lot or to stimulate the use of other forms of transportation than a
car in that area.

On the other hand, having autonomous off-the-grid parking meters might be
easier to install and maintain by a third party. Plus it allows you to start
growing parking meters everywhere, even in the middle of nowhere. Let them
pay!

~~~
tesseract
The ones I've seen have been installed as higher tech replacements for
traditional mechanical parking meters. Solar power means the old meter head
can just be removed from the pole and the new one attached, with no need to
worry about running underground electric service where none was before. I'm
sure the savings in installation cost more than makes up for the addition of
the solar panel.

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dzhiurgis
Pair it with bluetooth 4.0 ant implant inside my body. I will charge it myself
once in a while using inductive charger.

~~~
gonzo
Why not just use energy harvesting. You move & you're warm.

~~~
hinathan
But the warmth isn't on a temperature gradient so it's difficult to exploit.

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zxcvvcxz
Quick question: under specs for the M0+ where they say,

>Enhanced Instructions >Hardware single-cycle (32x32) multiply option

Does that mean their hardware can multiply 32-bit by 32-bit numbers in a
single clock cycle?? I took a computer organization course where I implemented
a simple hardware multiplier and it took a lot more cycles than that, so I was
curious.

~~~
omgtehlion
You can create HW multiplier using only NOR+AND elements. It will consume a
lot of silicon, but will work fast enough.

BTW, most FPGAs have HW multiplier prebuilt block, because you will loose lots
of flip-flops or LUTs (or both) implementing one yourself.

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hopeless
How does a 1mm x 1mm chip actually get used? I'm guessing that the actual
package would have to be much bigger to enable mounting on a board?

~~~
jws
Generally the package is big enough to get all the connections out at a scale
that won't irritate manufacturing.

There are tiny packages though, NXP (one of the ARM builders) has a 2mm x 2mm
package with a similar ARM in it, but they can only get 16 pins out at that
scale, 4 are power and ground, one is clock leaving you 11 pins to rule the
world. (data sheet: <http://www.nxp.com/documents/data_sheet/LPC1102.pdf>)

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gurkendoktor


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xxiao
this is mostly for msp430 I feel, msp430 is 16-bit and kind of strange to deal
with, I'm happy to see this M0+ coming along to replace that.

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its_so_on
I don't need years of battery life: I need 32-36 hours (of use, not standby).
Then I can go from charging daily, like in the nineteenth century where you
have to wind your watch up every night, and Sherlock Homes can tell a watch
belonged to a drunkard by scratches around where you insert the winding key;
how different is it to fumble with the power adapter jack? - ahem, to charging
whenever it is CONVENIENT for me. It still wouldn't quite last through a long
weekend at a lodge with just one inconvenient power outlet if you use it a lot
EVERY day, but most people don't and if you do, you still only have to find a
quiet period to charge it ONCE during the long weekend, like whenever the
social activity dies down.

How many people keep multiple chargers at the different places (home/office)
they are, or even take one with them ALL the time, just so they don't get left
stranded. All this is fixed if the machine has a longer cycle than you do,
over a typical 1-2 day cycle. Then you can pick the most convenient time to
charge up from 20 or 40 or 60 percent or wherever it's at by then, you can
work on it it at a cafe without plugging it in after working somewhere else
you couldn't plug it in the night before, or go away for the weekend with it
without any charger at all, if you know you're back in the ofice Monday and
are sure to use it less than that.

In the meantime you don't worry, you aren't inconvenienced.

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bryanlarsen
These chips are not going to be used in phones.

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its_so_on
I was talking about my laptops -- terrible sorry this wasn't clear! I thought
the cafe/home/office example made it clear. Who works all day on their phone?

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ivix
They aren't for laptops either.

Think about something more like a toaster or a temperature sensor.

~~~
ctdonath
Or a pacemaker - something drawing power for a very long time, and where
recharging/replacing is literally painful and power failure is deadly.

