Hewlett-Packard has announced a new memory chip which the company has been working on over the past four years. The new memory chip uses a CMOS design, which has made it possible for HP to create a, the least to say, minimalistic design. The memory chip is no bigger than a grain of rise (2x4mm) and then the chip also contains an integrated antenna. HP’s mini chip can namely not only store data in a very small format, but also transfer data without wires to other units. HP has no clear uses for this memory chip as of today so it will most likely take another two years before we will see it in action. But it has several interesting ideas for what the chip could do. It hopes to be abe to link the digital and physical world by attaching digital data to physical products.
Some examples of what you could do is sound for pictures, attach the chip to a photograph and add some fitting music or commentaries. Digital post cards, attach the data chip onto a regular post card and add pictures, videos and sound to it from your vacation. Security card, integrating the circuit into an ID card that stores relevant digital data. HP has many ideas and what separates its circuits from e.g. RFID, which is also used to store digital information, is mainly the transfer speeds for the data.
“The chip has a 10 megabits-per-second data transfer rate – 10 times faster than Bluetooth™ wireless technology and comparable to Wi-Fi speeds – effectively giving users instant retrieval of information in audio, video, photo or document form. With a storage capacity ranging from 256 kilobits to 4 megabits in working prototypes, it could store a very short video clip, several images or dozens of pages of text. Future versions could have larger capacities.”
The uses are many and that the chip is really, really small is no doubt. We’ve already heard of people installing RFID circuits inside themselves through operations and HP’s new memory chip could very well be a new candidate for a similar project.
