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The Crazy-Tiny Next Generation of Computers
An anonymous reader writes University of Michigan professors are about to release the design files for a one-cubic-millimeter computer, or mote. They have finally reached a goal set in 1997, when UC Berkeley professor Kristopher Pister coined the term "smart dust" and envisioned computers blanketing the Earth. Such motes are likely to play a key role in the much-ballyhooed Internet of Things. From the article: "When Prabal Dutta accidentally drops a computer, nothing breaks. There’s no crash. The only sound you might hear is a prolonged groan. That’s because these computers are just one cubic millimeter in size, and once they hit the floor, they’re gone. 'We just lose them,' Dutta says. 'It’s worse than jewelry.' To drive the point home, Dutta, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Michigan, emails me a photo of 50 of these computers. They barely fill a thimble halfway to its brim."
Great. There are some days where I forget where I've put my smartphone. So now I can expect to lose my entire computer because it dropped and I might have vacuumed it up with the dust bunnies?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
a [drool] beowulf cluster of these!
You knew there was one.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I'll be really excited when they've scaled it down to the size of vapor. Then we can have REAL "cloud computing!"
However, this isn't really a computer, as it still needs a power source and I/O. It's just a small wafer of etched silicon until it has those things.
If they used this as the basis for an environment-powered computer and it contained bluetooth and/or WiFi capabilities as well as decent storage, this could be interesting. Get a bunch of these self-powering in a mesh network and you've got something interesting.
To self-power, they could just stick some PV chips on top. For WiFi, use the new quantum-state on-wafer antennas. With these two things on board, you've got something that has a power source, a sensor, and data I/O -- it can truly be called a computer, and a handful of them could be programmed to do all sorts of things (distributed streaming video camera, security system, control any other device that requires motion/light sensitivity, etc.).
God damnit Apple. Quit changing your fucking connector specs every fricking new device. I'm getting really tired of having to buy all new cables Every. Single. Time.
A desktop on your dust, though... that's new.
This is the year of the Linux Dust Top!