The Onio Batteryless Vision with Kjetil Meisal

Kjetil Meisal, CEO and co-founder of Norwegian semiconductor startup ONiO, joins Chris to discuss the development of ONiO.zero—a revolutionary batteryless microcontroller powered entirely by ambient energy harvesting. They dive into Norway’s rich semiconductor heritage, custom RISC-V architecture, sub-microwatt cold starts, paper-based biofuel cells with BeFC, and making “stick and forget” IoT sensors a reality.

Timeline

• Welcome Kjetil Meisal: Chris welcomes Kjetil Meisal, CEO of ONiO, to discuss their vision for truly batteryless microchips. (00:00:15)
• Stick and Forget: Exploring the core dream of deployment-friendly IoT sensors that run indefinitely on harvested energy without maintenance. (00:02:15)
• Nordic Silicon Heritage: Kjetil highlights Norway’s deep semiconductor roots and ecosystem spanning Oslo and Trondheim. (00:05:00)
• Norwegian Chip Companies: A breakdown of global heavyweights built on Norwegian acquisitions, including Texas Instruments (former Chipcon), Silicon Labs (former Energy Micro), ARM Trondheim (former Faltung), Microchip (Atmel AVR team, discussed on The Amp Hour #633), Nordic Semiconductor, Novelda, and startups like ONiO. (00:07:45)
• The ONiO.zero Platform: Banner specs of the ONiO.zero MCU—a custom RISC-V CPU core, multi-protocol 2.4 GHz radio, power management unit, and multi-domain energy harvesting. (00:13:00)
• Energy Storage Options: Moving from ceramic capacitors and supercapacitors to rechargeable cells under a “batteries not required” philosophy. (00:15:45)
• Going Back to 2016: The origin story of ONiO with co-founders Kjetil Meisal, Runar Finanger, and Vemund Bakken exiting Novelda to solve low-power challenges. (00:19:15)
• From Fever Patches to Silicon: Transitioning from a single-use temperature monitoring patch concept to general-purpose ultra-low-power silicon. (00:22:15)
• Mature Process Nodes and In-House IP: Why ONiO chose a robust, mature silicon node and developed 100% of their IP in-house without third-party licensing. (00:25:00)
• Developer Mental Shift: How clock gating, powered-off blocks, and GCC-based toolchains require firmware developers to think in terms of energy scarcity. (00:27:45)
• Sub-Microwatt Cold Start Sequence: How the Power Management Unit harvests ambient voltage, triggers ultra-low voltage monitoring loops, and safely boots the RISC-V core. (00:30:00)
• Pomegranate Seed Power: Demonstrating extreme low-power operation by booting the chip and transmitting Bluetooth signals off citrus fruits, tomatoes, blueberries, and a single pomegranate seed. (00:32:30)
• Energy Harvesting Sources: Matching ambient indoor light, outdoor solar, Peltier thermal gradients, and RF signals with ultra-efficient silicon. (00:37:00)
• Managing the Energy Reservoir: Transmitting data in bursts, managing duty cycles, and running a wireless thermostat for two weeks on a supercapacitor in total darkness. (00:40:00)
• Custom 2.4 GHz Radio Stage: Achieving -100 dBm sensitivity at 3 mA RX and 0 dBm at 6 mA TX with custom RF integration supporting 5+ protocols. (00:42:30)
• Why RISC-V over ARM?: Why ARM’s licensing fees and instruction restrictions led ONiO to custom RISC-V microarchitecture tweaks, echoing open-architecture discussions on The Amp Hour #637 and The Amp Hour #687. (00:45:30)
• CoreMark & ULPBench Benchmarks: Breaking down ONiO’s 22 µW/MHz efficiency, 4.1 CoreMark/MHz score, and record 180.75 EEMBC ULPMark score. (00:48:30)
• Compute Trade-offs: Balancing clock speed vs. leakage and why continuous low-power computing outweighs raw high-performance processing in IoT. (00:52:00)
• On-Board TinyML and Event Processing: Using lightweight edge signal processing to transmit event triggers rather than continuous raw data streams. (00:54:30)
• Key Application Domains: Deploying batteryless sensors in precision agriculture, smart building infrastructure, asset tracking, and perpetual biosensing (as previously explored on The Amp Hour #733). (00:58:00)
• Biofuel Cells with BeFC: Partnering with French startup BeFC to combine paper-based enzymatic sugar fuel cells with ONiO silicon for compostable tracking tags and skin patches. (01:00:15)
• Customer Engagement & Trade Shows: Partnering with early-access customers, offering QFN packages, and appearing at IFA Berlin, Electronica, GITEX Global, and TechCrunch Disrupt. (01:01:45)
• Sustainable Electronics: Exploring biodegradable PCB substrates, finding ONiO at onio.com, and following their updates on LinkedIn. (01:02:45)