Traditional microprocessors, built on silicon, have seen significant performance improvements in recent years due to shrinking transistor sizes. However, cost remains a barrier to integrating such chips into disposable or flexible products.
These costs are typically determined by three main factors: the expensive silicon manufacturing processes, licensing costs for proprietary instruction sets such as x86, and the cost of chip packaging. Furthermore, silicon’s inherent brittleness makes it unsuitable for use in flexible or portable devices.
Pragmatic semiconductor has addressed these issues with Flex-RV, the world’s first 32-bit microprocessor built on a flexible substrate. Flex-RV stands out not only because of its flexible shape based on the metal oxide semiconductor indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO). but also because of the built-in machine learning capabilities. Developed in collaboration with Qamcom and Harvard University, it marks an important step in the field of non-silicon microprocessors and can operate while physically bent.
Transforming industries
“This is an exciting step forward in flexible semiconductor technology,” said Emre Ozer, Senior Director of Processor Development at Pragmatic and principal investigator. “Enabling an open-standard, non-silicon 32-bit microprocessor will democratize access to computing, emerging applications while opening the door to sub-dollar computing.”
Ozer highlighted how cost and form factor have long limited the use of microprocessors in emerging applications such as smart labels, wearables and healthcare, despite relatively low computing requirements.
Flex-RV, with its 17.5 square millimeter core and approximately 12,600 logic gates, uses two key technologies: the open-source RISC-V instruction set and IGZO TFTs.
The RISC-V architecture, which is open-source, eliminates the costs associated with proprietary ISAs while allowing customization for specific application needs. IGZO TFTs, on the other hand, enable the fabrication of microprocessors on flexible substrates, reducing production costs and environmental impact compared to traditional silicon fabs. The chips are also more durable because they don’t require the rigid protective packaging that silicone chips do.
Pragmatic says Flex-RV has undergone extensive testing and can operate reliably at clock speeds up to 60 kHz and power consumption less than 6 mW, even when bent to a 5 mm curvature. The technology potentially opens up new possibilities for integrating computing power into flexible, disposable and wearable devices, transforming industries such as healthcare and consumer goods.
Pragmatic Semiconductor’s latest research paper was published in Nature.