The tiny computer can be completely powered by light

Apr 9, 2015 06:54 GMT  ·  By

Gone are the days when computers were large, bulky devices that would have taken up the size of a room. Today’s computing devices are getting smaller and smaller by the day, which brings us to Michigan Micro Mote (M^3).

Developed by the University of Michigan’s computer science department, the M^3 is a computer smaller than a grain of rice. Despite its small size, the gizmo is apparently capable of taking photos, reading temperatures, recording pressure, radio communication, and more.

The team at the University of Michigan has been developing the miniscule piece of gadgetry for over a decade, and now the computer is ready to go into production. Given its compact form, we can speculate that the device will end up being adopted in medical, industrial or IoT applications.

The tiny M^3 will probably find uses in the medical or industrial fields

You won’t be going around carrying the M^3 in a purse or jacket, as the technology will most likely end up being injected in the human body in order to aid medical practitioners to get quicker ECG, pressure and temperature measurement results.

In an industrial setting, the computer can be embedded into oil wells to help sensing the remaining pockets of oil resources.

In IoT, and for the mainstream consumer, the M^3 will find a purpose in the intelligent home setting or it will be used to track important personal belongings like keys, wallets and other pieces of gadgetry.

But one of the great challenges of making such a tiny computer was outfitting it with sufficient battery life.

As one of the team members involved in the project explained, what most people don’t realize is that a very large part of the volume of any computer system (a smartphone for example) is taken up by the battery.

So the team had to focus on reducing required power to the minimum, in order to keep the whole system as small as possible. For instance, the Phoenix processor inside the M^3 requires just 500pW in standby mode.

Programming and recharging is achieved by light

Other challenging aspects encountered when building the M^3 were programming and recharging.

The small device uses a light interface for both duties. In order to send the required programming data to the computer, a high frequency strobe is utilized. Furthermore, the computer is capable of charging itself from light and even ambient light available in the room.

Demand for tiny computers is on the rise, and both Intel and Google recently announced computers-on-a-stick, devices meant to connect to televisions and monitors in order to temporarily turn them into working computers.

But unlike the M^3, the Chromebit and Intel Compute Stick aren't exactly targeted at professionals activating in the healthcare or industrial ecosystems.

The tiny Micigan Micro Mote (6 Images)

Micro Mote compared to a coin
Micro Mote is the world's tiniest computerMicro Mote was developed by the University of Michigan
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