World's smallest microcontroller looks like I could easily accidentally inhale it but packs a genuine 32-bit Arm CPU
A sneeze-inducing 1.38 mm² and small enough to make a Raspberry Pi look like a bus.
These are the chips boomers think are in vaccines /s
Perfect for the next hand soldered Mitxela project.
“I use Arch btw!” now in ultra small size
This is called a WLCSP package and the size is dictated mostly by the number of pins. There have been some for ages with 16 pins (4x4 grid), but this one is half the size at 2x4 pins, so cool. You need pretty advanced PCB fab to use them. But yes, if you go on youtube or do a web search, you can find examples of people hand soldering this type of package.
This part has 16k of flash and 1k of ram, so comparable to the lower end TI MSP430 processors, and maybe midrange by 8-bit MCU standards. It might be comparable to the ATmega parts on the earlier Arduino boards. The later (ATMega328) Arduinos have 32K flash and 2.5K ram, which is still in the same general class.
"accidentally inhale"
heh, then YOU could run Linux
which reminds me of this sketch from LoadingReadyRun where Linux gets installed on everything, even a person:
https://youtu.be/ajW2fDy41fY?t=229
I am reminded of my favorite moment from The Modern Rogue, on the subject of implantable RFID chips:
Jason: "Can I crush it up and snort it up my nose?"
Bobick: "If we made a list of things you could do, that would be on the list."
"accidentally"
I just did a line of microcontrollers
So hypothetically what would happen if you somehow ate this
Silicon is basically sand, with some plastic and copper. You will be fine.
Someone will install Doom on you and post it on the internet
that's cool but at 24mhz it's not doing much. still cool, but quite limited
I work with 32MHz microcontrollers at work and you can do plenty with them. It's a different world from say general CPUs where speed is king. You're often more concerned about timing reproducibility than outright clock rates. There are also considerations about power consumption, electrical noise, functioning in extreme environments, etc. that may inform your decision to go with one controller over another.
It's going to be about equivalent to the ATMEGA328P you get on a garden variety Arduino can do, albeit with a lot less IO. You're probably looking at the speed controller in a power tool or the onboard computer of a Qi charger or something. In a lot of cases, you just need something that can run a few lines of C.
