Imec shows flexible 8-bit microprocessor with 16,000 transistors

The Leuven research center Imec has made a flexible 8-bit microprocessor that can make real complex calculations. The flexible chip is 24.9 mm2 in size and contains 16,000 transistors. The researchers managed to run the game ‘Snake’ on the chip.

According to Kris Myny, principal scientist at Imec, the development of malleable microprocessors started ‘about a decade ago’ when the chips were comparable to traditional silicon-based chips from the 1970s. “To make them usable for IoT applications, they had to be a lot smaller and faster,” the man said in a press release. According to Myny, energy consumption had to become much more efficient and the production of flexible thin-film transistors then mainly took place in laboratories, according to the man.

According to Myny, these transistors have been used for some time, mainly as RFID tags. Thanks to this flexible microprocessor, however, new applications are possible, such as reading rapidly changing data from wearables or dynamically calculating the freshness date of food, if a freshness sensor is also used.

According to Myny, the number of transistors that make up the flexible microprocessor cannot be compared with the number of transistors in traditional silicon chips. According to the researcher, the flexible microprocessor does have enough computing power on board to process data from sensors and to execute complex code. The researchers say they managed to run the game Snake.

Flexible microprocessor imec