Imec shows a flexible 8-bit microprocessor with 16,000 transistors – Computer – News

The Imec Leuven Research Center has made a flexible 8-bit microprocessor that can perform truly complex calculations. The flexible chip has a size of 24.9 mm2 and contains 16,000 transistors. The researchers were able to run the “snake” game on the chip.

According to Chris Maini, Principal Scientist at IMEC, development of flexible microprocessors began ‘about a decade ago’ when chips were comparable to traditional silicon-based chips from the 1970s. “To make it usable in IoT applications, they had to get a lot smaller and faster,” the man said. In a press release† According to Maine, energy consumption should become more efficient, and production of flexible thin-film transistors is then mainly done in laboratories, according to Man.

According to Maine, these transistors have been in use for some time, primarily as RFID tags. Thanks to this flexible microprocessor, new applications are made possible, such as reading rapidly changing data from wearable devices or dynamically calculating the freshness history of food, if a freshness sensor is also used.

According to Maine, the number of transistors that make up a flexible microprocessor cannot be compared to the number of transistors in conventional silicon chips. According to the researcher, a flexible microprocessor has enough on-board computing power to process data from sensors and execute complex code. The researchers say they managed a game of Snake.