this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025

81 points (100.0% liked)

Technology

37531 readers

213 users here now

This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.

Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.

Rules:

1: All Lemmy rules apply

2: Do not post low effort posts

3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff

4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.

5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)

6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist

7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed

founded 6 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

World's smallest microcontroller looks like I could easily accidentally inhale it but packs a genuine 32-bit Arm CPU (www.pcgamer.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

22 comments fedilink hide all child comments

top 22 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 weeks ago

Perfect for the next hand soldered Mitxela project.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago

This is called a WLCSP package and the size is dictated mostly by the number of pins. There have been some for ages with 16 pins (4x4 grid), but this one is half the size at 2x4 pins, so cool. You need pretty advanced PCB fab to use them. But yes, if you go on youtube or do a web search, you can find examples of people hand soldering this type of package.

This part has 16k of flash and 1k of ram, so comparable to the lower end TI MSP430 processors, and maybe midrange by 8-bit MCU standards. It might be comparable to the ATmega parts on the earlier Arduino boards. The later (ATMega328) Arduinos have 32K flash and 2.5K ram, which is still in the same general class.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

I am reminded of my favorite moment from The Modern Rogue, on the subject of implantable RFID chips:

Jason: "Can I crush it up and snort it up my nose?"

Bobick: "If we made a list of things you could do, that would be on the list."

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

"accidentally"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I just did a line of microcontrollers

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

These are the chips boomers think are in vaccines /s

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

"accidentally inhale"

heh, then YOU could run Linux
which reminds me of this sketch from LoadingReadyRun where Linux gets installed on everything, even a person:
https://youtu.be/ajW2fDy41fY?t=229

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

“I use Arch btw!” now in ultra small size

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

So hypothetically what would happen if you somehow ate this

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 weeks ago

Silicon is basically sand, with some plastic and copper. You will be fine.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

Someone will install Doom on you and post it on the internet

[+] [email protected] -11 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

that's cool but at 24mhz it's not doing much. still cool, but quite limited

[–] [email protected] 26 points 3 weeks ago

I work with 32MHz microcontrollers at work and you can do plenty with them. It's a different world from say general CPUs where speed is king. You're often more concerned about timing reproducibility than outright clock rates. There are also considerations about power consumption, electrical noise, functioning in extreme environments, etc. that may inform your decision to go with one controller over another.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It's going to be about equivalent to the ATMEGA328P you get on a garden variety Arduino can do, albeit with a lot less IO. You're probably looking at the speed controller in a power tool or the onboard computer of a Qi charger or something. In a lot of cases, you just need something that can run a few lines of C.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

A 32bit @24MHz CPU is extremely overpowered for those use cases.

Qi operates in the 87-205 KHz range. A power tool is several orders of magnitude slower.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Reading another commenter say it has 16k of flash memory and 1k of RAM in a 2x4 pin package, so even if the core has some speed to it...what exactly are you going to achieve with that?

Other than being 32-bit it's not too far from the specs of an ATTINY85. I have a couple of those kicking around to play with, it's 8k of flash, 512 bytes of RAM and 512 bytes of EEPROM and with an external oscillator it can be clocked at up to 20 MHz.

Let's take my cordless router as an example. It has a brushless motor that can turn at ~20,000 RPM. The microcontroller would have to be able to read the shaft position sensor and make changes to the H-bridge or whatever circuit is driving the motor two if not four times per revolution. How many machine instructions do you think each of those operations takes? Ten? It also has to at least occasionally look at the speed selector to vary the motor RPM, and is probably monitoring the battery or communicating with the battery pack's own controller to prevent the nine or ten ways you can kill lithium cells by using them.

You're probably approaching the limit of what you can do with 16k of flash, 1k of memory and 6 IO pins.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

I guess maybe we have different requirements, but I built a similar controller using a 68HC05 when I was in college (yes I am that old) and it had plenty of cycles left to burn. This thing is nearly an order of magnitude faster than the microcontroller I used.

EDIT: I will grant you the I/O is pretty limited, but you could also offload some of the work to an external timer/accumulator

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

I imagine the other factor is the tooling at the chip fabs. When you can make an entire microcontroller that small, for 20 cents apiece, why bother continuing to make less powerful chips? We can just do this now.

Reading the article, they mentioned "medical devices and earbuds" as potential use cases.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Could maybe run Doom scaled down.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The original DOOM ran on a 80386 which was actually slower than or roughly equivalent to this controller. Recommended system specs were for a 486 though which was maybe 2-3x as fast.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

it could run it! that's roughly the same cpu speed as this

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

A downsized (?) .kkrieger for sure