Hitachi's new chip can be embedded in currency, and can then tell a computer or other 'reader' whether a bill is real or counterfeit. Hitachi this week unveiled a tiny Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chip so small that it can be embedded in money or other documents.. . .
Hitachi's new chip can be embedded in currency, and can then tell a computer or other 'reader' whether a bill is real or counterfeit. Hitachi this week unveiled a tiny Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chip so small that it can be embedded in money or other documents.

The chip is roughly half the size of its predecessors, only 0.4 millimeters square, with a thickness of 60 microns (a micron is one millionth of a meter). That makes it only slightly larger than a grain of sand. The tiny integrated circuit has 128 bits of read-only memory (ROM) and stores information such as identification and security codes.

Hitachi is forming a subsidiary company, Meu Solutions, to market the chip, and said it expects sales of US$145 million by 2005. The company said the market for radio-enabled chips is growing at about 25 percent a year, and that it plans to manufacture between 25 and 30 million of the chips monthly.

The chip can transmit information a distance of about 12 inches to a computer system or "reader unit" that can determine whether a bill is real or counterfeit, for example. The chip itself has no power source and must use the radio frequency signal from a communicating device. Hitachi is considering adding rewritable memory to the chip sometime in the future.

Wireless messages from the chip are encrypted with internal private keys. Another user with access to a mathematically linked and verified public key would know that specific messages could come only from specific chips.