  Metamaterials and metasurfaces have given possibilities for manipulating
electromagnetic (EM) waves that in the past would have seemed impossible. The
majority of metasurface designs are suitable for a particular frequency and
angle of incidence. One long-sought objective is the design of programmable
metasurfaces to dynamically manipulate a variety of incoming EM frequencies and
angles. In order to do this, a large-scale mesh of networked chips are required
below the metasurface, which apart from adapting electrical impedance
properties, also communicate with each other, thus relaying information about
meta-atom settings, as well as forwarding possible distributed measurements
taken. This paper describes why an asynchronous mixed-signal ASIC is
advantageous for the control of scalable, EM absorbing, metasurfaces.
