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HP Provides Alternate Technology to RFID
NerdForceMaster writes "HP has unveiled a new alternative to standard RFID technology, a chip the size of a tomato seed that has 500KB of memory and can communicate at 10mbps. Lets hope this one is commercially availible soon." We beg forgiveness; dupe etc etc.
I am guessing that the most popular RFID implementations are probably transportation passes, like London's Oyster card and Hongkong's Octapus card. And there are toll-passes as well, but not quite as wide-spread.
The chip is a 4 square millimeter.
RFID may not be "built out" yet, but it is already a big part of some of the big boys, like WalMart. They've spent a fair chunk of change developing their system around RFID. They are not going to switch in midstream to something new. It would cost too much. And now that WalMart and other big beasts of the supply chain have some RFID in place, guess what their suppliers are going to be forced to work with.
It's useful to keep in mind the distinction between passive and active RFID. Passive RFID includes only an RF receiver, is read-only, and has a minimal read distance (effectively, about 5 meters). Active RFID tags have a transceiver and are therefore limited only by their power source (and size considerations). Some RFID experts have estimated that between six and twenty cents (USD) is the maximum cost for passive RFID that provide ROI. This makes HP's technology between five and sixteen times greater than the cutoff for ROI on passive RFID.