Flexible processors? Does this mean that they are totally cool about being cross-platform? Not at all. In reality, these processors are physically flexible to the touch! Wild, huh? Imagine being able to remove your P4 and bending it without it snapping?

At the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) here, Japan’s Seiko Epson Corp. presented a paper on a flexible, 8-bit asynchronous microprocessor, based on a low-temperature, poly-silicon TFT technology.

The ACT11 processor is aimed at the emerging flexible microelectronics market. Flexible microelectronics is expected to become a platform for developing thin, low-power emissive devices.

The ACT11 is a flexible, 32,000-transistor device, which measures 27- x 24- x 0.2-mm and weighs just 140-mg. The two-metal-layer product features an 8-bit-wide channel, with 608 instructions, 16-MB of addressing space, and four interrupt sources.

The processor runs from 30-kHz to 500-kHz and operates from 3.5-to-7 Volts. It consists of 80 I/O pins.

It is manufactured by using a low-temperature TFT and surface-free process by laser annealing and ablation techniques. The company refers to its manufacturing technology as SUFTLA. Using this technology, a device is manufactured and then lifted off the glass substrate for transfer to a plastic substrate.