Cambridge-based Pragmatic Semiconductor has demonstrated its Flex-RV bendable non-silicon RISC-V processor. On Wednesday, the firm published a blog, Nature paper, and video to showcase what it calls “the world’s first 32-bit microprocessor in a flexible technology that is fully functional while flexed.” Pragmatic also boasted that the Flex-RV is machine learning capable and can be produced for less than a dollar.
In the video, you can see a Flex-RX processor sample being wrapped around a pencil while executing simple commands. The demo shows that the physically flexible general-purpose RISC-V processor can be coiled tighter than a 5mm radius. Then, we see it put through some tensile bending, flattened, and compressive bending before being unfurled again. Programs can always continue to execute without missing a beat (or crashing or freezing).
