The world’s smallest computing system is now officially a millimeter scale device now. The first of its kind, this is a prototype for an eye pressure monitor for glaucoma patients which is implantable in the eye. This development is coupled by another such millimeter scale device which is a miniature radio which doesn’t need to be tuned manually but automatically finds the right frequency. This is especially a very important development in terms of making these micro devices organized enough to constitute a wireless sensor network. These networks will have a huge impact on the tracking processes in the future of the world; be it monitoring pollution, the integrity of structures or surveillance; these devices hold the potential for adding a bit of “smartness” to most things we interact with.
Both these developments have come from the University of Michigan and are being touted as the precursors of the future of electronics which is millimeter scale computing. The papers for their research will be presented by the researchers for each of the two innovations in the International Solid State Circuits Conference to be held in San Francisco. Three professors from the U-M Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science are leading the work at the moment.
According to the top researchers of the world, small computers are the future of the IT industry. Bell’s Law, which goes along the same lines of the famous Moore’s Law, says that almost each decade sees the development of a class of cheaper and smaller computers. In keeping with this, the volume of the devices decreases by almost two orders of magnitude, while the number of systems belonging to each person increases. The law has held true ever since the times of the old mainframe computers of the 60s to the personal computers in the 80s, the notebooks from the 90s and now the smartphones in the new millennium.
