The 6502 processor has been manufactured on flexible material #Wearables @pragmatic_ltd @WDC65XX

The team at PragmatIC have taken the Western Design Center 6502 microprocessor design and in TWO WEEKS transferred it for manufacture onto flexible material.

PragmatIC Semiconductor, a world leader in flexible electronics, is proud to announce that it has manufactured a flexible version of the 6502 processor, the iconic design that kick-started the personal computer revolution.

Launched in 1975, the (6502) was a fraction of the price of competitor chips, which is why Steve Wozniak built it into his Apple I computer. The chip and its variants went on to become the main brains of seminal computers like the Apple II, Commodore PET, Commodore 64 and BBC Micro… The design is still supported today by Western Design Center (WDC), who estimate that their licensees have shipped over 6 billion embedded 65xx processors, growing by hundreds of millions per year.

PragmatIC’s flexible 6502 was laid out and manufactured in less than two weeks, demonstrating the game-changing ability of our FlexIC Foundry to support rapid realization of semiconductor hardware. A second iteration has already been taped out to optimize pinout, footprint and speed, leveraging an agile design approach that would never be possible with the high cost and long lead times of silicon fabrication.

See the full press release and on Twitter.

The flexible/wearable technology segment appears to be booming!