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The Crazy-Tiny Next Generation of Computers

Posted by samzenpus on from the getting-small dept.

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."

2 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. Private IoT reporting for duty! by geekmux · · Score: 1, Interesting

    "Such motes are likely to play a key role in the much-ballyhooed Internet of Things..."

    Yes, yes of course. I'm sure they are.

    "Private IoT reporting for duty, Sir!"

    "Hello Private! I would ask why you are here, but apparently the rest of us don't really have a fucking clue either..."

    Funny how we're already labeling their role as key when we don't even really know what the mission of IoT is anyway, other than driving capitalism through PT Barnum marketing ideology.

    1. Re:Private IoT reporting for duty! by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That's *one* IoT... but how does that relate to my lightbulbs that track me around the house or my garage door opener that lets me open it remotely from my Apple Watch after seeing who's standing outside?

      The IoT is about networking commodity hardware and aggregating telemetry and sensor data remotely. For some reason, it seems to have significant overlap with Cloud Computing such that we really have a CloT with access control nightmares.

      Funny thing is, vending machines were on the Internet almost 20 years ago. This was useful for the parent's illustration (service tech knows what to restock and when, and if the machine's out of service / bil cartridge is full / etc). But we didn't call it the IoT back then; just the Internet. That was part of the original vision, before .com got involved and morphed it into some sort of a "display your web browser banner here" place.

      In other words, the IoT is closer to the original concept of the Internet than what most people have thought of as "the Internet" for the past decade or so. A bunch of internetworked hardware talking to each other and to humans, all around the world.