I find RFID (Radio Frequency ID) technology a bit like magic, I’m amazed at how small it is and that it can communicate wirelessly. The Memory Spot research team have come up with a new chip that makes an RFID chip look huge in comparison.

The new chip is the size of a grain of rice, measuring 2-4mm square (which sounds smaller than a grain of rice to me). The initial prototype can hold 512KB of data though that is expected to rise in the future.

Like RFID, you communicate with the chip wirelessly but speed wise there is a huge improvement. The maximum data transfer rate with RFID is 848 Kilobits per second (though in practice it is often a lot slower than this) whilst the new chip boosts transfer speeds of up to 10 megabits per second.

The chip is 2 years away from be commercialisation but that should gives us time to think of some cool uses for it.

Further info at the BBC, thanks to Love Battery from Grunge Music Forum for the tip.