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.

More secure than RFID?

[gasmonso]

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/ [religiousfreaks.com]

Re:Memory Spot RFID?

[rbarreira]

It is an improvement (for certain applications). Do you want people accessing your private data from far away?

RFID?

[someone300]

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?)

Compete with Zigbee and Z-Wave?

[us7892]

At first is sounded like this could compete with Zigbee http://www.zigbee.org/en/index.asp [zigbee.org] or Z-Wave http://www.z-wavealliance.org/content/modules/Star t/ [z-wavealliance.org] 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...

Re:Memory Spot RFID?

[jdray]

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.

Re:There are 8 bits in a byte.

[Yvan256]

They need to remind everyone because people will think there are 10 (thank you hard drive manufacturers).

It's not that people think there's 10 bits in one byte, it's that they think there's 1000 bytes in one KB.

And you know what? They're right. It's the programmers who fucked up when they started using standard ISO suffixes and modified what they meant. One kilometer is not 1024 meters, it's 1000. The hard drive manufacturers are right, the programmers are wrong.

It may not seem like a big deal to americans since they're not using the metric system (I've never seen someone say "5 kilomiles" either), but for everybody else on the planet, this "computer K vs real K" is confusing for the average computer user.

Like it or not, the only way to fix things is for programmers (and the OS'es) to start using the new suffixes (KiB, MiB, GiB, etc). It'll be easier and less confusing for people to remember that "1 KiB = 1024 bytes and 1 km = 1000 meters" instead of "one computer K = 1024 and one real K = 1000".

Big Brother, Free of Charge!

[End Program]

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