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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.
Thanks for the refresher there HP.
Seeing as how Memory Spot readers must be "positioned closely" to access the data stored on the chip, wouldn't these make a better choice for passports? I think this would alleviate a lot of fears.
http://religiousfreaks.com/It is an improvement (for certain applications). Do you want people accessing your private data from far away?
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
I thought this was exactly what the passive RFID chips do, except that RFID chips tend not to have this large a memory (though is there a technical reason why that's the case?)
Got MILF? It does a body good!
At first is sounded like this could compete with Zigbee http://www.zigbee.org/en/index.asp or Z-Wave http://www.z-wavealliance.org/content/modules/Star t/ technologies. Then again, what is this good for? The battery is...wait, no battery. Power comes from the device that reads/writes this grain-of-rice sized wireless/memory device...
check out my webpage, it's on a server embeded under my skin and shares power with my pacemaker.
/.ing of something so close to your heart? ;o)
Do you really want to risk the
Don't take the above poster too seriously. He doesn't.
RFID features longer range and a small uniform, pre-encoded response. (e.g. ID Badge at work) HP's new chip features shorter range and a larger response, selectable from a large pool of responses, and probably the pool of responses is changeable even after deployment.
As another poster said, the short ranges at which this thing would work will alleviate a lot of people's privacy concerns. Still I gotta say that tagging people is still tagging people.
mooooo...(NOT!)...ank
...so afraid of disorder, we turn it into a God... (Bruce Cockburn, Gospel of Bondage)
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
Steve Jobs: Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to announce the smallest iPod ever, the iPod Flea.
Rhapsody in Numbers
I still don't understand why RF readers and things of this sort aren't included on every cell phone, along with an easy, common standard to interface with.
Pointing your cell phone at a product for price comparisons and technical specs, or getting a small video on an item in a museum, or collecting e-mail addresses on College Night, or brochures at a convention, or any other sort of "Additional Info" normally not available at the point of contact, seems to me to be an extremely sustainable business model at a minimum of cost and input.
RFID might not be a commercial utopia, but it's a good start in a direction we could've been taking 10 years ago.
Here is more info on this topic from forbes. I think they did a better job covering the story. Plus they have a picture.
All you need to increase the range is to come up with some sort of pringles can for your memory reader.
liqbase
Case in point: I wanted to build a cat door that would read the chip embedded in my cat's skin before opening to let him in. The range on reading that thing is a matter of a centimeter or so, so I'd have to teach him to rub a reader in just the right way to get the door open, which seemed like more of a PITA than it was worth. His feline nature makes him virtually untrainable. He doesn't wear a collar, so the larger antenna versions that look like a name tag were out. This thing might help matters. Of course, if it could read his tag while he was out in the yard and open the door for some neighborhood cat peering in the door, that would be bad, too.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
"There are eight bits in a byte." Really?? When I started programming, you could select the byte size. Now we're forced into 8 bit bytes. What a horrible loss of freedom. I blame Canada. And terrorists. And global warming.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Didn't you see the article summary? It's not coincidence that the chip is "the size of a grain of rice". You know that last batch of chicken fried rice you had? Yes, it has already begun... my theory is that the chip logs information on your stomach contents, then when it gets flushed back to the sewage treatment plant it updates your data -- the government increased the levels of fat and other unhealthy materials in the most eaten foods, that's what Americans are growing fatter and fatter every year. Their plan? To make Americans so fat, they cannot resist when the government comes in with force. Thankfully I only eat paint chips and mountain dew, so I'm unaffected. Ssshhh, I hear the black helicopters coming, I must make my escape.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
Man, I'd sure love me the complete PDF of a book that I just bought embedded into the back cover.
I can assure you, the best way to get rid of dragons is to have one of your own.
It's only a matter of time that the government will want to implant these into humans to thwart terrorism. It will start small: just tag ex-cons, then sexual deviants, and then the carnies. Next, you are unpatriotic not to have one install in every member of your family.
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me--
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
- Martin Niemöller
Another step towards the day when I can upgrade my computer by simply pouring a bag of crap through a hole in the top of my case. ...Hey, I sould patent that! (Link barely has anything to do with the comment, it just came up in a quick google for toilet patent.)
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All those stamps in my passport were getting annoying. Maybe they can put one of these in my passport, maybe when they get those RFID things working, so that I can just download where I've traveled. It'd be handy and I can't see anything that could go wrong.
- Tash
Vrooommm...
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
"roughly the same size as a grain of rice"
Would be interesting if you could raid these thing, need more storage just dump a handful in to the pot next to you computer.
Would be hell to try to find one that had gone faulty but I expect you could just turn it off.
My only concern would be the non-technical collage room mate who drunk and looking for food at 2 am try to cook you rice and then eat it. Brings a whole new side to data recovery.
No useful text here whatsoever.
when they start mass producing these in China next to the rice paddies