One cubic mm IoT device

[Tim Kannegieter]

Thanks to Sherry Moghadassi FIEAust, Deputy Chair - Australian Society for Defence Engineering NSW at Engineers Australia Sydney Division

 for alerting me to this amazingly small IoT device from the University of Michigan in the US.

https://www.eecs.umich.edu/eecs/about/articles/2015/Worlds-Smallest-Computer-Michigan-Micro-Mote.html

and 

http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/processors/specksize-computers-now-with-deep-learning

and 

http://transmitter.ieee.org/making-iot-smarter-micro-motes/

[Heath Raftery]

But can it run Crysis?

 

Seriously, these are fascinating. The mind just boggles at the implications. There'll be some niches where the size is a gamechanger (inside the body, "smart dust", etc.), but for many practical purposes the size might be a hindrance. The power requirements though - potentially indefinite battery life in indoor lighting - raises some interesting prospects.

[Andrew at MEA]

I also read this article when it appeared in print in the IEEE magazine 'Spectrum'

What interested me was the return to the concept of 'on-site' data compression offered by this powerful computing platform.

I agree with Heath that the size is interesting, but that's not particularly important in my field of IoT environmental measurements.

I suspect that the real hint being offered here is that the power and speed of computation in the Cloud is being recognised as finite, and that on-site sensor algorithms (that we've had for decades within smart sensors) will make a big difference to the speed and utility of the IoT.