imec details flexible 6502 plastic processor

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imec in Belgium has detailed the design of an 8bit 6502 plastic processor developed with foundry PragmatIC Semiconductor and KU Leuven. The 8bit microprocessor detailed at ISSCC 2022 this week was built in a 0.8µm metal-oxide flexible technology and is capable of running real-time complex assembly code at a clock...

www.eenewseurope.com, Feb. 22, 2022 – 

imec in Belgium has detailed the design of an 8bit 6502 plastic processor developed with foundry PragmatIC Semiconductor and KU Leuven.

The 8bit microprocessor detailed at ISSCC 2022 this week was built in a 0.8µm metal-oxide flexible technology and is capable of running real-time complex assembly code at a clock frequency 71.4kHz. The microprocessor was implemented with a unique digital design flow with a new standard cell library for NMOS metal-oxide thin-film indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (IGZO) transistors with a 'quasi-CMOS' structure.

This is relevant for designing a broad range of loT applications, integrating around 16,000 metal-oxide thin-film transistors on a 24.9mm2 flexible chip.

Flexible electronics based on thin-film transistor technology is preferred over Si CMOS-based electronics for applications requiring low-cost, thin, flexible and/or conformable devices. The technology is already being used for health sensors and RFID labels and as a driver for flat panel displays.

imec designed the flexible 8-bit microprocessor based on the source file of the MOS6502 chip.

"Our flexible microprocessor shows excellent characteristics for IoT applications, including high speed, low power consumption of 11.6mW when running at 10kHz, 134.9mW at max operating speed, and high transistor integration density," said Kris Myny, Principal Scientist at imec. "At ISSCC 2022, we will showcase real-time correct operation of our circuit by running the complex assembly code of the popular Snake game."

"Metal-oxide thin-film transistors based on IGZO are inherently n-type. This results in circuits with a higher static power consumption compared to complementary technologies. To address this, we created our own design flow starting from the open-source file of the MOS6502 microprocessor – one of the most influential microprocessors ever designed," he said.

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