Custom Silicon For Low-Cost Information Dissemination Among Illiterate People Groups

We present Literacy in Technology (LIT), a low power, low cost audio processor for information dissemination to and among illiterate people in developing regions. The 265K gate, 8 million transistor, 23mm2, ARM Cortex M0 processor uses a memory hierarchy consisting of an on chip 128kB true LRU cache and off-chip NAND Flash. It is designed for efficient operation on Carbon Zinc batteries and has a high-level of system integration to reduce cost in order to achieve the goal of being an affordable Information and Communication Technologies device that provides timely and actionable information.