Wearable electronics, like watches and fitness trackers, represent the next logical step in computing. They’ve sparked an interest in the development of flexible electronics, which could enable wearables to include things like clothing and backpacks.

Flexible electronics, however, run into a problem: our processing hardware is anything but flexible. Most efforts at dealing with that limitation have involved splitting up processors into a collection of smaller units, linking them with flexible wiring, and then embedding all the components in a flexible polymer. To an extent, it’s a throwback to the early days of computing, when a floating point unit might reside on a separate chip.

But a group within the semiconductor company ARM has now managed to implement one of the company’s smaller embedded designs using flexible silicon. The design works and executes all the instructions you’d expect from it, but it also illustrates the compromises we have to make for truly flexible electronics.