HP boffins develop tiny wireless chip

HP's wireless chips transfer data at 10Mbps, which is much faster than RFID

HP has developed miniature wireless chips that could be used to store 100 pages of information. 

Researchers at HP Labs in Bristol said that the chips are about the size of a match head. 

The technology could threaten the use of Radio Frequency ID tags, which experts predict will be evaluated by two-thirds of European businesses within the next 12 months.

HP's wireless chips transfer data at 10Mbps, which is 10 times the speed of Bluetooth and much faster than RFID.

The chips are also able to store 4MB of data, which also outperforms RFID chips by a considerable margin.

Power is generated from a shared electro-magnetic field, and the chips draw energy from devices that touch them to read and write data.

HP said that it plans to put the chip design through an official independent industry standards procedure.

Howard Taub, associate director at HP Labs, told Reuters that the technology would probably take at least two years to find commercial applications.

However, Taub explained that HP would sell the technology to other companies under licence before that time.

The chips were developed over four years by the Memory Spot team at HP Labs.