While most of our attention is directed to small-integrated silicon circuits that provide fast and rapid computing, there is another area of integrated electronics that operates at much lower speeds that we should follow. Thin-film flexible circuitry will provide an innovative way to set up electronics where a heavy or expensive circuit board with traditional components can be very expensive or unsuitable, and WikiChip is here to remind us of a Leuven University team who claimed to have made it. The fastest thin-film flexible microprocessor yet. Some of you may think it’s familiar, it’s our old friend 6502.
The choice of an older 8-bit processor may seem a bit weird, but we see the benefits of the promotion – after all, you’re reading about it here because it’s a 6502. It also has the advantage of being relatively simple and well understood architecture. This is not the same as the original MHz clock speed with an upper limit of 71.4 kHz, but performance is not the most notable feature of flexible electronics. Production technology isn’t quite ready for the mainstream so we’re unlikely to feature the flexible Commodore 64 anytime soon, but the achievement is the impressive feat of a functional thin-film flexible microprocessor.
Meanwhile, if you’re curious about the 6502, we’ve seen its designer life, [Chuck Peddle].