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Hardware Technology

7.5 Micron Thick RFID Tag 149

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the next-comes-the-RFID-kick-me-sign dept.
YesSir writes "The EETimes is reporting that Hitachi has a breakthrough in RFID technology that they are planning to show at this years ISSCC (International Solid-State Circuits Conference). The new RFID chip is their newest mu-chip that, measuring in at 7.5 microns, is ten or more times thinner than a sheet of paper and comes complete with 128-bit identifying goodness."
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7.5 Micron Thick RFID Tag More

7.5 Micron Thick RFID Tag

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  • Pretty soon we will be carrying our tin foil encrusted wallets and clothing interlaced with foil to foil the detection system of the aliens watching us.

    I wonder if government will advocate tracking of people using RFID, or advocate banning the tracking of people via RFID?
    • I wonder if government will advocate tracking of people using RFID, or advocate banning the tracking of people via RFID?

      They probably won't take a stand either way for the time being, it's best for them to keep thier options open, although not necessarily good for us.

      The way I see it, in the future they will start implanting these into Drivers Liscenses, and since you are (I think) required to have ID with you this can be thier loophole into always having an eye on you, but not actually sticking you w

      • The way I see it, in the future they will start implanting these into Drivers Liscenses, and since you are (I think) required to have ID with you this can be thier loophole into always having an eye on you, but not actually sticking you with a needle full of nano technology.

        They don't need to stick you with a needle now. There are guns from what I understand that can inject you with a tag at a distance. The sensation felt is that equivalent to a mosquito bite. Most people would pass it off as a hair b

        • Meh. Why not just stick it into the innoculations that we get as kids? :p Tagged from birth.
        • Either the bullet is actually the RFID tag, in which case I'm not sure of the aero dynamic properties of hte RFID tag, but something that small wouldn't really travel well in straight lines, and would be too light to maintain the necessary speed. If it was larger, and could carry the necessary momentum necessary to get to you from a distance, then i would surely feel a lot more painful than a mosquito bite, or you'd notice the dart sticking out of your neck.

          • Either the bullet is actually the RFID tag, in which case I'm not sure of the aero dynamic properties of hte RFID tag, but something that small wouldn't really travel well in straight lines, and would be too light to maintain the necessary speed. If it was larger, and could carry the necessary momentum necessary to get to you from a distance, then i would surely feel a lot more painful than a mosquito bite, or you'd notice the dart sticking out of your neck.

            Bruce S. covered the conceept of RFID Injection [schneier.com]

      • "The way I see it, in the future they will start implanting these into Drivers Liscenses, and since you are (I think) required to have ID with you.."

        I think that you are required in most states to have your drivers license with you if YOU are operating a vehicle on public roads.

        However, at least for now, you are NOT required to carry any form of ID on you all the time for any reason.

    • You will be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, and numbered.
    • ...how on earth do you disable/kill these things?
      Static electricity? What?!?
    • I wonder if government will advocate tracking of people using RFID, or advocate banning the tracking of people via RFID?
      Can't I just leave me cell phone on all the time?
    • I wonder if government will advocate tracking of people using RFID, or advocate banning the tracking of people via RFID?

      Yes.

    • Dude, the foil will be incrusted with RFID chips! Yikes!

  • small enough? (Score:2, Funny)

    by joe 155 ( 937621 )
    are they not already small enough; I have one in my card and its the same size as any other credit card. I alwyas like to see people pushing the realms of what is possible but haven't we already reached a situation when its already "small enough"... not to mention the fact that now they are so small I'll not know where to put the tinfoil... dam it, the tinfoil could even have RFID in it :O...
    • that is why you forge your own... this will usher in a new era of /.'ers && the rest will be in some jail... survival of the fittest.
    • Now what was that again about a mark in the palm or the forehead and not being able to buy anything or travel anywhere, etc? Yeah. RFID. Mark o' da beast is here! woot! Now, about those horsemen...
    • The RFID topic is usually met with alarmism about privacy, but some applications of cheap RFID ought to be cool. Game pieces that interact with game boards. Keyboards with no circuitry except to read RFID embedded keys. Better snail mail. Any technology can be abused. You're here, now go delete your cookies.

  • Great... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So instead of just being on our food packages. It'll be in our food.

    Yummy.
    • LOL. Take this the next logical step. Your health insurance company parks outside your house and sets up a Pringles Can RFID scanner to see what's coming down the sewer.

      Your premiums just went up because you ate too many pork rinds.
    • So instead of just being on our food packages. It'll be in our food.
      Yummy.

      Ah yes, in future episodes of Austin Powers they'll just feed Fat Bastard a bowl of RFID Cereal (TM) instead of making poor Beyonce stick the tag up his big fat hairy ass.
    • Good grief. Imagine archaeology as an entrepreneurial field for the first time, somewhere in the time of Duck Dodgers. Innovative mavericks will be levitating across midwestern sewerage fields in their byte-mining combines, parsing the surface for data which, in the aggregate, when cross-referenced with live historical transaction records will yeild a corpus of information having arbitrage value on the global information market.

      Everything about everyone will be inferrable by triangulation, but only by a
    • So instead of just being on our food packages. It'll be in our food.

      I can just hear the conversation now:
      "Sir, we are tracking the suspect but he appears to be using the sewers to move about the city. We suspect he is planning to escape by boat since he is heading towards the sea."

    • Meh, you consume eat more silicon than what's in this thing just by drinking out of a glass. The question, of course, becomes whether or not the signal (when activated) is strong enough to pass through stomach acid and several layers of fat and skin.

      That or they end up with a lot of Fat Bastard-esque toilet-tracking. Which is definately the best way we can track down... umm... useless crap.

  • It is literally a paper tracking system.

    • Re:Maybe paper, probably not (Score:4, Interesting)

      by mpapet ( 761907 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @01:12PM (#14652346) Homepage
      There might be some problems with putting it in paper:

      1. Module has to stay in the paper. This is harder than it sounds.
      2. Antenna (for contactless) has to be much thinner and more flexible than paper. Many transit systems using microcontrollers embedded inside tickets might already have this, but the paper is pretty thick.
      3. Antenna has to stay in the paper.
      4. Paper tracking can be done already with UV inks. I'm not sure which would be cheaper though.

      Does anyone know what kind of microcontroller is used on the transit system tickets?

  • OMG! This is thin enough... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06, 2006 @12:57PM (#14652173)
    ...to RFID tag tinfoil hats, and you would never even know it except for the black helicopters following you.

  • The smaller they are, the harder they fall (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jordan Catalano ( 915885 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @01:02PM (#14652220) Homepage
    Shouldn't a smaller chip mean that even less radiative power is needed to overload and inactivate the tag? So... good news?

  • RFID signatures in art (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Soloact ( 805735 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @01:02PM (#14652221) Homepage Journal
    This seems to me that artists could embed an RFID chip in their art, such as under paint, or even in a tatoo, to identify their work. Such a thin tag could be under the label layer in a CD/DVD/etc to identify the origin, to identify whether the work is original and/or authorized. But, of course, someone will eventually find a way around this as they did with CSS and other encryption.

  • just one word (Score:3, Funny)

    by iplayfast ( 166447 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @01:02PM (#14652233)
    PAPERCUTS!
  • I wonder if McDonalds will start tracking where we go after we scarf down a Big McRFID.
  • How will they prevent someone from stealing and counterfeiting the RFID reader and using that to find and destroy RFID's inside the paper (or worse yet, duplicate its data)?

    Is there a way to run a current through a piece of paper to destroy the RFID?
    • find and destroy RFID's inside the paper
      I believe it's a pretty simple. I will leave it up to fellow /.'ers to fill it in.

      or worse yet, duplicate its data
      This is much harder to do. Normally the tags are pretty dumb, they have a hard-coded serial number and that's about it. My understanding is changing it after manufacture is not feasible. Is it possible? Probably. I think there are easier weaknesses to attack though. Social engineering comes to mind.

      If they do a little more than just store a number,

      • or worse yet, duplicate its data
        This is much harder to do. Normally the tags are pretty dumb, they have a hard-coded serial number and that's about it. My understanding is changing it after manufacture is not feasible. Is it possible? Probably. I think there are easier weaknesses to attack though. Social engineering comes to mind.

        Devices that can encode Matrics 0+ and Gen 2 tags (which are rewritable) run about $8000. Sure you can duplicate a tag. Problem is getting Gen 2 RFID tags in small quantitie

        • So if that's not a big fraud issue right now, what makes anyone think RFID will be a huge fraud problem in the future with an enormously higher barrier to entry?

          Because geeks love thinking of ways to take advantage of systems, even if they would never do it themselves. Add "sticking it to the man" and the paranoia which comes built right into all RFID issues (and tags) and everybody on /. will try to think of a way to screw with the system.

          • Re:another easily circumvented solution (Score:4, Interesting)

            by $ASANY ( 705279 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @04:33PM (#14654386) Homepage
            Easy. Carry a battery-powered baby monitor that uses the 900MHz band in your pocket. Those things are wonderfully capable of farking up any and all passive RFID tag reads. Just about anything that uses the 900MHz band will do. The reflective signal of a passive tag is extremely weak, and any powered emissions source at close proximity will mask an RFID tag's signal. Chances are that since there's no error correction in Gen 1 and Gen 2 tag constructs, the signals from any baby monitor will cause numerous phantom reads as well.

            Look at the biggest challenges in passive RFID today, and it'll show you exactly where the vulnerabilities are. Proxomity to metal, proximity to liquids, proximity to other tags, false reads frequency, sensitivity to interference and tag failure rates provide all sorts of opportunities for general mayhem. It don't take much.

  • Math illiteracy (Score:3, Funny)

    by MyNymWasTaken ( 879908 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @01:10PM (#14652319)
    ten or more times thinner

    That little bit of ineptitude is nowhere in the article; so the blame passes to the submitter.

    "10 times thinner / (less in any form or fashion)" is exactly like saying "300% less". It is an ridiculous statement made by a math illiterate. It is, by definition, impossible for anything to lose more than 100% of it's value.

    People see the statement "3 times larger" and, because they can barely add 2+2 without an electronic calculator, they think "3 times smaller" is a valid statement.

    [/rant]
    • I'm sorry, but I don't understand what's wrong with saying something is 10 times thinner than a sheet of paper.

      In math-think I'd write 1x = (1/10)y where x = sheet of chip and y = sheet of paper.

      right????

      • The reason you don't understand what's wrong with saying something is ten times thinner is that you believe that you can apply the rules of math to formulate proper English. Natural languages are not nearly as amenable to logical analysis as is the realm of math.
    • What something means mathematically is entirely different from what something means literally. Besides if you just interpret "times smaller" to mean 1/ then it makes perfect sense to both parties.

      • Yeah, yeah, I know, but what I find so offensive is that the illererati use such hamfistedly awkward and nonsensical language to describe relationships for which simple language already exists, and THEY CHOSE NOT TO LEARN.

        Here, watch me say it correctly:

        (Ahem)

        "The new RFID tag is one-tenth the thickness of a sheet of paper."

        There, now wasn't that simple? Ya know, way back in school when we told you(*) fractions and algebra were important things for you to understand, we weren't kidding.


        [(
    • It is, by definition, impossible for anything to lose more than 100% of it's value.

      That little bit of ineptitude is nowhere in the article; so the blame passes to the poster.

      It is an ridiculous [sic] statement made by an English illiterate. It is impossible for something to lose more than 100% of it is value, because that just doesn't make sense.

      If you're going to be a dick, watch your ass.
      • Why do you call someone who corrects poor writing a "dick"? If Person A wrote crappy code and Person B called him on it would you also call Person B a dick?

        Why does making a simple typo mean that someone correcting an egregious error in writing should "watch [his] ass." If only people who write perfectly can offer corrections, then nobody will be qualifed to offer corrections. Or would you prefer that nobody ever corrects anyone else's writing so that we can all just wallow in our mistakes and never improve
    • >ten times thinner

      Another way to look at it is that the scale is missing. To say that something is "ten times thinner" you have to know what unit of thinness is being used. Same with "ten times quicker" or "ten times slower", as you say. It's backwards construction.

      Marketers love to use this mangling, because it sounds better to the untrained ear than "one tenth as [thick, far, fast]". More is always better, so ten times something is better than one tenth of something.

      People respond with some form of
  • The virtual panopticon has begun construction.
  • ahh, smaller - so it takes _less_ than 3 seconds to fry these chips in a microwave oven.

    it's always nice when a company lets you know how much easier it is to destroy privacy-invading technology.
  • I fear the moment we use this kind of chips inside our own body. At this moment there are several studies in development to apply the RFID chips in Medicine.

    • I fear the moment we use this kind of chips inside our own body. At this moment there are several studies in development to apply the RFID chips in Medicine.

      Scenario #1: RFID nano-medicine saves my life. GOOD THING.

      Scenario #2: RFID nano-medicine tracks my location, rogue Pinkerton agents hunt and kill me. BAD THING.

      Scenario #3: RFID nano-medicine extends my life. GOOD THING (but see also TOO EXPENSIVE).

      Scenario #4: RFID nano-medicine used to collect statistical bio-data from millions of people, inclu

      • Scenario #5: RFID nano-medicine makes me immortal. NOT SURE ...

        We'll I'll be sure to immediately start taking up sword-fighting just in case an endless stream of similarly RFID nano-medicine users come to take my head.

        You can never be sure when the Quickening is going to happen and one needs to be ready to take the Prize, just in case

  • This technology is taking off very slow (Score:4, Interesting)

    by blueZ3 ( 744446 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @01:19PM (#14652421) Homepage
    I remember seeing an ad a few years back about how you would be able to push your loaded cart through the check-out and all the groceries would be scanned and totaled and you could just pay and go without the need unload the cart and wait for the checker to scan and reload everything. The closest I've seen is the "self checkouts" at the grocery stores (anyone else have these?) where you scan and bag the items yourself. (I'm still wondering how they would handle items that are sold by weight)

    Like any technology this could have its uses (as the above example) and I really think a lot of the concerns are exaggerated (I have a hard time getting my RFID badge to trigger the door locks here, even when it's practically touching the reader). The tinfoil hat crowd and their "the black helicopters will read these as they fly over your house" don't make a lot of sense to me. But maybe the joy of the thing is in conspiracy, not the logic? My read on this is that in order to generate enough power to be read at any great distance (like from outside your house) you'd have to paint the tags with enough radio to fry the occupants.

    Anyway, so far it's all talk and nothing much else of practical value. Maybe the packaging of the next Duke Nukem will have RFID? :o)
    • In DNF, RFID is actually a wearable vapor.
    • One way to sell things by weight is just have the RFID in a lable that was printed off like when you get meat with a bar code on it. This would require a veggtable attendant in the super market though.
    • I'm still wondering how they would handle items that are sold by weight
      At the self checkouts in my neck of the woods, you put the item on the scanner/scale to measure the weight, then use the touch screen to navigate to the item that it is. You could also print a barcode label at the self-serve barcode printer in the produce dept.

      Not sure how closely they watch to make sure you're paying for the right item, though.
    • Like any technology this could have its uses (as the above example) and I really think a lot of the concerns are exaggerated (I have a hard time getting my RFID badge to trigger the door locks here, even when it's practically touching the reader). The tinfoil hat crowd and their "the black helicopters will read these as they fly over your house" don't make a lot of sense to me.

      To repeat a point that Schneier made recently (can't find the link, sorry), there's three ranges involved here and you're making the
    • One problem (that you mentioned) is the products by weight. This is how I buy a lot of my food. With meat packing, that would be solved by programming the rfid for in the packaging when they are packed. Depending on where you are, this still is a manual process done by real people. Fruit and veggies are normally picked out by the consumer, so there is a problem there.

      Besides that, there is the issue that products that you have paid for may still have active RFID tags in them. Imagine having a pack of gum in
    • I recently saw a documentary showing the application of the technology in a German supermarket much like we'd been promised a few years back. You could email your shopping list through ahead of time (or select the products from the website as required) and they were added to your account. On arrival at the supermarket you swipe your customer card to dispatch a trolley with attached LCD screen, and the trolley provides a list of the items to purchase and their location within the store as required. You scan

  • How do you show something you can't see? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...they are planning to show at this years ISSCC... ...measuring in at 7.5 microns...

    How do you show something you can't see? :-)

    Stephen
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I don't see how anyone could use something like this to really controil people. Tracking where 300 million American are would be a huge waste of resoures (computers, readers, and physical people to install and maintain). I could see that used to track know criminals (sex offenders and the like), but if you've done nothing wrong, you should have nothing to worry about, unless you "accedentally" get marked as a pedophile or something.
    • > 3) Tie the appropriate RFID to the personal ID, continue updating as RFID's enter/leave the individual

      Each new US passport has an RFID chip. Orwell described 1984 - this is 2006.

  • That's great news! (Score:4, Funny)

    by catdevnull ( 531283 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @01:24PM (#14652472)
    I was worried that the older ones would be visible under my forehead.
  • Oh greatest news of all! With this RFID tag being so small I now have a solution for tracking all my RFID tags.. I tried to adhere two RFID tags together, but that was way too bulky. Now I can have wafer thin tags on my bulkier, older tags, and I finally know where any of my RFID tags are at any point of the day! Oh joys of joy!

    Additionally, as I am thinking about this new miracle invention, I also have a way of tagging all my M&Ms and Skittles.. yeah! I will soon find out who has been eating my S

  • I have too many RFID cards in my wallet already and they don't work when you tag the wallet on the reader. I have to take the appropriate card out to use it! This is just going to get worse!
    • The conspiratorialists will point out that it's just the kind of dissatisfaction that comes from experiencing such hassles, combined with taking the base technology for granted, that will have people welcoming innovations that solve it but are even more scary -- like the use of a primary key for all systems (SSN is the current bogeyman for such conspiratorialists). I can testify that for my part, I'm definitely vulnerable to the "this new technology sucks, and here's why," then welcoming the solution that
  • If it's that thin, it'd better be flexible (capable of operating when flexed). Otherwise, if it's made of silicon, it'll just break unless attached to a solid surface. A credit card may not be stiff enough unless it's small sized (~2mm sq).

  • Could care less about size... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by doormat ( 63648 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @01:49PM (#14652759) Homepage Journal
    What I really want out of RFID tags is the ability to scan 1000s per minute. I've got a large room, a library of documents. If I RFID tag each one, I want to be able to run a wand past all the documents and inventory all 100,000 documents in 15 minutes. Right now, the people I've talked to say its not possible. That is what I am waiting for.

    • For most major marathons these days, the timing system depends on each participant wearing a small RFID tag on their shoelaces. At the start line, every runner passes over a mat to calculate their starting delay (from when the gun was fired).

      I'm not sure how much different this example is from what you're talking about (since the reader in this case can be much larger than a hand-held wand), but at marathon start lines, there seems to be no problem keeping track of what is probably on the order of a thous

    • The scan rate likely isn't the problem -- I've seen scan rates in the several hundreds per second without trouble. In this application it's likely the proximity of the tags to each other that's the hurdle. If the tags have the necessary separation from each other, this could be done fairly easily.

      PM greg_dot_letiecq_yat_wfinet_dot_com.

  • Makes no sense (Score:3, Informative)

    by Pedrito ( 94783 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @01:53PM (#14652806)
    I see stuff like this all the time and it makes no sense to me:

    measuring in at 7.5 microns, is ten or more times thinner

    Okay, I assume this means that paper is roughly 75 microns thick. But to say something is 10 times thinner means that it's 10 x 75 microns thinner. In other words, somehow, 7.5 microns = 75 microns - 750 microns.

  • 128-bits is enough for everyone (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @01:54PM (#14652813) Homepage
    How do they assign RFID numbers? 128-bits is probably plenty if they are given out efficiently. Or are they giving them out like IPv4 blocks and we are going to run out eventually?
    • There are numerous constructs for the data stored on RFID chips. One of the most popular is to give a gajillion dollars to EPCglobal in order to obtain an EPC Manager Code, which you can then concatenate with a locally-assigned sequence in order to have a globally unique value.

      Most of the other constructs work pretty much the same way with:

      [construct identification]

      [entity identifier]

      [sometimes:locally assigned product code] [always:locally assigned serial number]

      So for the most part, unless you are a part

  • Top SECRET FACT:Most modern cars tracking ALREADY! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They have been grain-of rice sized for years, mainly for all car tire embedding.

    TOP SECRET FACT:Most modern cars have tracking transponders ALREADY! While you drive on highways. Wires in the road and 14 feet above work fine.

    Spy transmission chips embedded in tires that can be read REMOTELY while driving.

    A secret initiative exists to track all funnel-points on interstates and US borders for car tire ID transponders (RFID chips embedded in the tire).

    Yup. My brother works on them (since 2001).

    The us gov T.R.E.
  • Make sure you check your tin-foil hats even closer now!!
  • Time to suit up in the EMF shielding clothing sold here [lessemf.com].
    I especially like the cap woven with silver threads. :)
  • I already feel uncomfortable when someone pats me on the back - I'm the type to immediately try to find the sticky note. But I can find stickies - not sure that I'd find a 7.5 micron tag.

  • They'll do both! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by wheresjbob ( 942938 )
    "I wonder if government will advocate tracking of people using RFID, or advocate banning the tracking of people via RFID?"

    They'll likely do both! Track people using RFID while banning others from doing the same.

  • ... but you still need an antenna (Score:4, Insightful)

    by helix_r ( 134185 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @04:07PM (#14654148)

    Yes, of course, its not surprising that the RFID chip itself can be incredibly small. What most commentators are missing is that YOU STILL NEED AN ANTENNA to access the thing.

    A "long-range" (> few inches) RFID tag needs a relatively large area antenna, like the size of a business card.

    A "near-field" tag can have an antenna that is a few millimeters wide, but then your reader has to be very close-- almost touching.

     

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