SCDigest editorial staff

The News: Tech giant HP announced this week it has developed new technology that acts like RFID, but which will be able to hold much more data

The Impact: The new technology is probably years away from full commercialization and market adoption, companies envisioning RFID applications should be aware that this emerging technology could have a place in some scenarios.

The Story:  HP announced this week it has developed a new technology it internally calls “Memory Spots” which are similar to RFID chips but with expanding memory and speed.

Like RFID, the wireless chips hold data, which can be accessed through compatible readers. HP’s design assumes for now the reader itself will supplier power to the chips, which HP says will be smaller than a grain of rice. To read the chip, however, the reader will need to come within about a millimeter of the Memory Spot, enabling a tiny antenna and therefore size, but obviously limiting use in some applications where longer reading distances are required.

The breakthroughs in the technology are related not only to size but capacity and communication speed. The chips will be designed to hold up to four megabytes of data, and communicate at speeds of up to 10 megabits per second – lightning fast.

This capacity and speed conceivably could enable video to be stored and accessed from the chips. So, when the repairman comes to fix machine, the last person to work on it could leave a video highlighting issues that were encountered that time, for example.

The potential supply chain related applications HP envisions include:

• Medical records: Embed a Memory Spot chip into a hospital patient’s wrist band and full medical and drug records can be kept securely available.
• Security passes: Add a chip to an identity card or security pass for the best of both worlds --- a handy card with secure, relevant digital information included.
• Anti-counterfeit tags: Counterfeit drugs are a significant problem globally. Memory Spot chips can contain secure information about the manufacture and quality of pharmaceuticals. When added to a drug container, this can prove their authenticity. A similar process could be used to verify high-value engineering and aviation components.

We’d add shipment documentation, repair histories and potentially many other applications.

At another level, this is just the latest is a series of technologies – two-dimensional bar codes, RFID – all designed to provide “portable data bases,” each of which has had some impact, but has yet in any instance to reach the level of adoption originally envisioned. And like all such technologies, especially in business applications, they compete with the increasingly easy and cheap ability to store and access data “on the network.”

Still, it is interesting technology that is worth watching. Anyone looking at RFID applications but thwarted by capacity issues should take a look at Memory Spots.

Do you see applications for this type of technology? Or is it just too easy to get the data we need from the network? Let us know your thoughts.