IBM's minuscule computer

The world’s tiniest computer is smaller than a grain of salt

WHAT HAVE IBM BOFFINS BEEN UP TO NOW?

 Size does matter if you’re IBM, given the computing giant has worked on massive supercomputers and boundary-pushing quantum computers. But it’s taken a different route with its latest development, claiming to have made the world’s smallest computer.

Dreamed up by IBM’s research division, the 1x1mm computer is around the size of a grain of salt. But rather than be used as some form of tech-based seasoning, it actually manages to pack in the power of a computer from the 1990s built on x86 architecture.

IT DOESN’T SOUND VERY POWERFUL…

While it might not pack a lot of power, Big Blue’s dinky computer costs less than 10 cents to make. This means they can be produced en masse and stuck on to all manner of things.

The computer itself needs to be mounted on to a motherboard, but even with that, it’s small enough to fit on a finger tip.

Cheap to make, small, but powerful enough to support some programs, given it still packs in several hundred thousand transistors, IBM sees the computer being used as a way to track and verify shipments of products that can be vulnerable to being knocked off with fakes.

SO A CRIME-BUSTING COMPUTER?