"It's flexible and cheap"

I don't know how cheap can this be considering there are processors 1E+10 times as powerful selling for <5 US$.

From the image caption: "It is puny compared to most silicon processors"

(The image appears to be an 8-bit ALU, larger than a man's thumb)

I'm not sure they're using the word "puny" correctly...

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/puny "slight or inferior in power, size, or importance"

In this case, they meant power, as in computational power.