Stick-on memory
Better and cheaper camera technology has made us all closet documentary-makers of our own lives, and an offshoot of this is a growing scrapbook culture. Scientists at Hewlett Packard's UK research labs are aiming to make the most of this. They have created the world's smallest wireless data chip, which will allow us fit more images in our scrapbooks. Called a Memory Spot, it can store up to half a megabyte of video, audio or hundreds of pages of text and it's tiny enough to be attached to postcards, photographs and other memorabilia.
Looking for a digital wireless solution to adding sound to photographs, the HP scientists came up with this experimental chip, based on CMOS (a widely used, low-power integrated circuit design), about the size of a grain of rice. Program manager, John Waters describes the concept, 'We are running at 2.5Ghz and using the same system for transferring power from one circuit to another, we can transfer information either to or from the chip.'
粘貼型的存儲器
越來越先進和便宜的照相機技術已經使我們都成為了我們自己生活的紀錄片制作人,而與此同時發展起來的其中一個分支便是迅速成長起來的剪貼簿文化?;萜赵谟难芯繉嶒炇业目茖W家們正努力充分利用這個趨勢和資源。他們已經創造了世界上最小的無線數據芯片,這將允許我們存儲更多的圖象在剪貼本上。人們稱其為記憶芯點,它能存儲半兆的視頻,音頻或者成百上千張的文本,同時它的形狀足夠小以至于可以粘貼在明信片,照片和其他大事記等文件上。
為了試圖尋找一種數字無線的途徑把聲音嫁接到照片上,惠普的科學家們提出了這款實驗芯片,并將其基于互補金屬氧化物半導體上(一種廣泛使用的,低功率的具有完整電路設計的半導體),其大小和稻米的谷粒相仿。程序設計經理約翰.沃特斯是這樣描述這個概念的,‘我們正在以2.5Ghz的速度運行并且利用同樣的系統從一個電路到另一個電路轉移能量,我們發現能夠實現對這個芯片的信息輸入和輸出?!?/P>