AltSql Instant Live Demo

A small solar cell charges a capacitor. When it is full, the sensor wakes, opens its store and saves readings, one after another, until the capacitor is empty and the power goes, wherever the sensor is at that moment: between readings, or in the middle of a write. Then it charges again, and wakes again, many times a minute. Two sensors, the same light, the same capacitor: one keeps its readings with AltSql Instant on MRAM, the other with AltSql Core on NOR flash.

Simulated power and chips, real engines. Both engines run in this page, compiled to WebAssembly, each on its own chip. The chips are emulated in memory, and every read, write and erase costs the energy and time its datasheet gives it.

How to Run It

  1. A minute in good light. 500 µW from the solar cell, a 2,200 µF capacitor: what each sensor saves.
  2. A smaller capacitor. 1,000 µF: less energy in each charge, and more wakes a minute.
  3. Cut the power at a byte. Pick where, in the middle of a reading’s write, the power goes, and look at the bytes.
  4. Dim light. 100 µW: a charge takes five times as long, for a minute.

On a wide screen the demo has more room: open it full screen.

About AltSql Instant

AltSql Instant is storage for MRAM and FRAM: each record sits in a fixed place and is updated there, and a write is kept the moment its call returns. Its records are AltSql Core’s, byte for byte, so a gateway running Core takes its sync batches as they are. In the demo, with 500 µW of light and a 2,200 µF capacitor, a sensor with no battery saved 1,428 readings in a minute with Instant on MRAM, and 220 with AltSql Core on NOR flash; the energy comes from the demo’s model of the chips.

AltSql Instant is a prototype, all rights reserved. It works and is tested in simulation on a PC, with time and energy on a chip computed from datasheets, and it has not yet run on a microcontroller: that is the Beta. Its Alpha report sets out how it was built and tested, and how each figure was measured or computed. Device makers and investors can ask for it through the contact page.

More: all live demos and the engines.