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HP Announces Tiny Wireless Memory Chip

Journal written by VorlonFog (948943) and posted by Hemos on Mon Jul 17, 2006 09:28 AM
from the very-small-rocks dept.
HP Wireless Networking Hardware
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.
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  • The Memory Spot is similar to radio frequency identification (RFID) chips, which are designed to store information that can be read wirelessly. However, there are several important differences. One such difference is range. Information on RFID chips can be read over relatively large distances, while HP said Memory Spot readers must be "positioned closely" to access the data stored on the chip.
    Sounds like they should be focusing on something that is an improvement...

    • Re:Memory Spot RFID? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rbarreira (836272) on Monday July 17 2006, @09:32AM (#15731228) Homepage
      It is an improvement (for certain applications). Do you want people accessing your private data from far away?
      • 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
          • 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.
          • The chip is already in him, between his shoulder blades. It's the standard PetID chip that's implanted in thousands of cats and dogs. I suppose I could get another one put in ($30), but after watching the vet use a reader to get the info, it just doesn't seem practical to use this particular type of chip. She had to rub the reader back and forth a couple times to read the chip, and it's not hard to find.
    • For lots of applications, it is a perceived improvement, it gives a sense of privacy.
    • All you need to increase the range is to come up with some sort of pringles can for your memory reader.
  • There are 8 bits in a byte.


    Thanks for the refresher there HP.
    • Thanks for the refresher there HP.
      Damn...you beat me to it! For a minute there I felt like I was back in elementary school computer class on an Apple ][.

    • Re:There are 8 bits in a byte. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by kahei (466208) on Monday July 17 2006, @10:45AM (#15731768) Homepage

      Not all bytes have 8 bits. A lot of older mainframes have 7 -- that's why octal was popular once, and why UTF-7 is still widely used. A few had 9, although that wasn't widespread. Some specialized computing devices have anywhere from 5 to 10. So pointing out that it's 8, in the context of a whole new specialized chip, isn't redundant.

    • This reminds me of those word problems in grade-school math, where they'd put some unrelated sentence in there to throw you off. Something like, "Roy has five apples. Roy gives three apples to Dean. Dean likes movies about gladiators. How many apples does Roy have left?"

      • 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

      • Sure, because in my day we had to put five septets in a word, and waste one bit. Ahhh, those were the good old days. 36 bit computers. Who wouldda thunk that they'd be supplanted by 32 bit computers? Those computers went up to 36.

  • More secure than RFID? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gasmonso (929871) on Monday July 17 2006, @09:31AM (#15731225) Homepage

    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]
    • The communication component is the same basic idea as RFID, probably just lower power.

    • 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.

      The chips in the new passports are ISO 14443 smart card chips, not standard RFIDs, and they do use the same sort of RF communications technology as these Memory Spot readers, and do have a similarly short range. With highly directional antennas, it's possible to read contactless smart cards from distances of u

  • RFID? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by someone300 (891284) on Monday July 17 2006, @09:32AM (#15731230)
    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?)

    • RFID vs. HP's new chip (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ansak (80421) on Monday July 17 2006, @09:46AM (#15731327) Homepage Journal
      From what I can tell, the comparison table here would go something like this:

      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)

      • 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.

        Not at all. Passive RFID chips can have computational capabilities. A good example is Speedpass, which uses a challenge-response crypto system. It's bad encryption that was easily duplicated by some grad students at Hopkins, but it is done.

        I

  • To implant information in a person and access it remotely. This is just bringing us closer to governments requiring chip implants.
  • ... does anybody know how much money Uncle Ben's is getting on royalties from HP?
    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.
  • 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...
  • ...before DHS requires all Americans (and visitors, for that matter) to have one implanted in their hands or elsewhere in their bodies?

    • Re:How long... (Score:4, Funny)

      by MrSquirrel (976630) on Monday July 17 2006, @10:18AM (#15731559)
      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.

  • iPod Flea (Score:5, Funny)

    by the phantom (107624) * on Monday July 17 2006, @09:46AM (#15731329) Homepage
    Steve Jobs: Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to announce the smallest iPod ever, the iPod Flea [google.com].

  • Commercial Use (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kthejoker (931838) on Monday July 17 2006, @09:47AM (#15731330)
    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 [forbes.com] info on this topic from forbes. I think they did a better job covering the story. Plus they have a picture.

  • It's difficult to see what these chips can do that smartcards, mini flash chips, and so on can't do... I think the main drivers are going to be cost and size and accessibility to ordinary developers.

    But it could be fun to build memory into ordinary objects. You would not need any electrical contacts. All you need is a universal reader that can presumably be cheaply added to PDA, notebooks, etc. On top of that it'd be easy to write software that reads and writes these to do interesting things:

    - s
  • Never felt my sig more in place than in this topic.
    Seriously, somebody NEEDS to put a human interface into the transponders :D

  • Great.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by cbiltcliffe (186293) on Monday July 17 2006, @10:06AM (#15731462) Homepage Journal
    This amount of storage allows the chips to hold a short video clip, digital pictures....
    So now the US government can include a short video or pictures of your last full cavity search on your RFID passport.....
    • Since so many have asked, I thought I should point out the obvious:

      So far, RFID resonds with a number, then you then crossreference with some sort of database to see what that ID represents. This apreach has obious advantages, but was also dictated by the limited amount of data transmition capabilities of current RFID chips, without sacrificing distance.

      This device described by HP would have the data on the RFID ship itself. This has the advantage that the reading device does not need to be connected to a r

  • "There are eight bits in a byte." (Score:5, Funny)

    by Russ Nelson (33911) on Monday July 17 2006, @10:07AM (#15731466) Homepage
    "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.
  • Man, I'd sure love me the complete PDF of a book that I just bought embedded into the back cover.
  • 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
  • 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! [totallyabsurd.com] (Link barely has anything to do with the comment, it just came up in a quick google for toilet patent [google.com].)

  • Perfect! (Score:3, Funny)

    by tashanna (409911) on Monday July 17 2006, @10:33AM (#15731663) Homepage
    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 [slashdot.org] working, so that I can just download where I've traveled. It'd be handy and I can't see anything that could [slashdot.org] go wrong [slashdot.org].

    - Tash
    Vrooommm... [tashcorp.net]

  • "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.
  • THIS IS RFID. There is no difference. RFID can have small or larage data sizes, small or large coils (which determine how much power is needed to read/write it), and read-only or read/write ability. This is RFID.

    All the concerns people have with RFID technology apply here.

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