HP Announces Tiny Wireless Memory Chip

Hewlett-Packard researchers have developed a memory chip with wireless networking capabilities that is roughly the same size as a grain of rice, the company said Monday. Prototypes of the Memory Spot chip developed by HP Labs contain 256 kilobits to 4 megabits of memory and can transfer data wirelessly at speeds up to 10Mbps. There are eight bits in a byte. This amount of storage allows the chips to hold a short video clip, digital pictures or "dozens of pages" of text, HP said, adding that the chips do not require a battery. Memory Spot chips get their power using a technique called inductive coupling, which allows power to be transferred from one component to another through a shared electromagnetic field. In the case of Memory Spot, this power is supplied by the device that is used to read and write data on the chip. Data stored on Memory Spot chips could be accessed using a variety of devices, such as specially equipped cell phones or PDAs, making them suitable for a range of applications, such as adhesive attachments applied to a paper document or printed photograph, HP said.

Comments

More info on this topic

[Alamose]

Here is more info on this topic from forbes. I think they did a better job covering the story. Plus they have a picture.

Re:There are 8 bits in a byte.

[swillden]

Eight bits in a byte? When did this happen?

I think the size of a byte became exactly eight bits in the 60s, though it's possible that other-sized bytes existed in machines developed into the 70s. These days the term is pretty unambiguous, but telecommunications standard documents usually prefer the term 'octet', since there have been bytes of other sizes (and even platforms with *variable-sized* bytes). In particular, 6-bit bytes were very common early in computing history.

Re:There are 8 bits in a byte.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hardly. The C compiler I use obeys the standard, but sizeof(char) == sizeof(short) == sizeof(int) == 1 and there are 16 bits in that byte. sizeof(char*) is 1 or 2 (16 or 32 bits) depending on compiler options, but function pointers are cleverly only 16 bits. Pah, you and your non-portable code. There are millions of units of this chip out there in the wild.

Re:Memory Spot RFID? [OT]

[Dun Malg]

Why not put it in his foot/lower leg and put the reader under the mat? If you made the reading antenna mat-sized he'd be sure to stand on it to get in. Then again, maybe you thought of that and I'm missing something obvious.

You don't get to choose where the vet puts the RFID tag. They always put them in the same place so animal shelter employees can actually find them if the pet is lost.