|
|
HP makes wireless rice
Author: Brett ThomasPublished: 17th July 2006
HP makes a wireless chip the size of a grain of rice.
The new chip is smaller than 4mm square and can hold up to 100 pages of text. Its short-range wireless transmission capability is approximately 10Mb per second, an incredible jump up from current Bluetooth and RFID tags. The chip is manufactured as a single unit including the memory and transmitter, which lowers costs considerably. In fact, it's hoped that the chip will weigh in at roughly $1.00 per unit upon commercial availability.
HP have started their marketing with implications in the health care field, where one chip on a wristband could replace entire charts. It also has a great benefit for drugs, as one could be embedded in sealed packages to assure that the drug is legitimate. However, don't expect them to be showing up next week - the chip is about two years from being brought to the marketplace. In that time, HP also hopes to increase the memory size.
A pretty neat announcement, indeed. 512KB of storage and a pretty blazing wifi... all that, and a grain of rice. Are you cooking up a thought on the matter? Drop it in our forums.
Recent articles on bit-tech.net
Comments (0)- Email to Friend
Stats: 0.041 seconds