The technology is extremely cool, but I struggle to find any real uses for this.
One demo shows a drone flight controller - but any drone has enough motors and actuators to render the power consumption of the MCU irrelevant.
The operating voltage is a flex, but I'm pretty sure no battery chemistry goes this low while retaining a lot of usable power in it. No power harvesting on board, no RF on board, no integrated buck converter. Which doesn't bode well for sensor uses either.
It's cool that an IC this low power, one that can run on voltage this low, is even possible to make. But it looks like a proof of concept piece more than anything.
Great to see new entries into western microcontroller development, especially trying to push the envelope in some dimension as this does.
If they get enough eval boards out at decent prices, and the SDK is halfway usable then it would appear some of the lessons from Espressif are being learned.
> Operating at such low voltages introduces timing challenges, including potential setup time violations. Upbeat addresses these with a second key innovation: a proprietary Error Detection and Correction (EDAC) architecture. This system, which includes a patented special flip-flop design, can catch and correct setup time violations that may occur at near-threshold voltages. This allows for reliable operation without sacrificing efficiency gains.
Wouldn't it be simpler to initialise at a higher voltage and then bring down the voltage after stabilisation? Unless of course the errors are always occurring?
Set up time is needed before every clock edge to ensure reliable state transitions by traditional flip flops. It’s not a one time thing. When you’re operating at low voltages it’s more likely that random system noise will violate the stable level required during the setup time. That’s why they need to do this correction all the time.
The technology is extremely cool, but I struggle to find any real uses for this.
One demo shows a drone flight controller - but any drone has enough motors and actuators to render the power consumption of the MCU irrelevant.
The operating voltage is a flex, but I'm pretty sure no battery chemistry goes this low while retaining a lot of usable power in it. No power harvesting on board, no RF on board, no integrated buck converter. Which doesn't bode well for sensor uses either.
It's cool that an IC this low power, one that can run on voltage this low, is even possible to make. But it looks like a proof of concept piece more than anything.
Great to see new entries into western microcontroller development, especially trying to push the envelope in some dimension as this does.
If they get enough eval boards out at decent prices, and the SDK is halfway usable then it would appear some of the lessons from Espressif are being learned.
> Operating at such low voltages introduces timing challenges, including potential setup time violations. Upbeat addresses these with a second key innovation: a proprietary Error Detection and Correction (EDAC) architecture. This system, which includes a patented special flip-flop design, can catch and correct setup time violations that may occur at near-threshold voltages. This allows for reliable operation without sacrificing efficiency gains.
Wouldn't it be simpler to initialise at a higher voltage and then bring down the voltage after stabilisation? Unless of course the errors are always occurring?
Set up time is needed before every clock edge to ensure reliable state transitions by traditional flip flops. It’s not a one time thing. When you’re operating at low voltages it’s more likely that random system noise will violate the stable level required during the setup time. That’s why they need to do this correction all the time.