HP's "memory spot" chip

July 17, 2006 | Matt Marshall

HP has just unveiled a tiny microchip that will let you store massive amounts of data anywhere you want to stick it — and which can then wirelessly transmit that data any way you want to.

The “memory spot,” as Hewlett-Packard’s research laboratory is calling it, is probably about two to five years from being sold on the market.

You’d be able to put it on a photo to carry a voice recording, stick it on passports so officials can examine images of travelers’ fingerprints and iris patterns or add it to soldiers’ dog tags so doctors can view their full medical records.

This will blow away the capabilities currently offered by RFID. But HP isn’t even sure it is going to run with the program. More here in from Mercury News colleague Nicole Wong.

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About the Author, Matt Marshall

Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.