The EPC Gen2 passive UHF RFID standard adopted in 2004 required that RFID tags/silicon must provide a minimum of 96 bit of data to support the EPC numbering scheme. For supply chain applications 96 bits is all they need and I do not see this changing anytime soon. For asset management applications, where the overwhelming majority of our customers are deploying RFID, a unique identifier is all that is required.
Over the past year a leading silicon providers such as NXP, Impinj, and Alien have announced products that provide at 512 bits of user memory. However, we are not aware of any significant deployments where extended memory is actually being used. Beyond the fact that these new tags have additional memory performance does seem to be enhanced...which is good. Moving forward 512 bits seems to be the new "base level", and I do not expect the leading manufacturers to go beyond this anytime soon.
The aerospace industry has been asking RFID technology vendors for high memory passive RFID tagging solutions ever since the EPC Gen2 standard was announced in 2004. The primary reason for this request was to support the storage of maintenance history records on commercial aircraft parts and equipment which would require significantly more storage capacity than 96 bits. In 2006 Intelleflex announced they would be delivering high memory passive silicon (64k) to a select group of tag manufacturers in time to support the Boeing 787 Dreamliner RFID initiative in 2007. Unfortunately they encountered several challenges in delivering these tags as planned. As a result Boeing decided to put the Dreamliner RFID project on hold until the technology had matured.
In 2008 Airbus announced an extended memory initiative similar to the program Boeing has planned in 2007. A significant number of Airbus suppliers, many of whom are also Boeing suppliers, will be required to affix tags to parts that have at least 8k bits of user memory. A very limited number of silicon providers have announced high memory silicon products. Having been through this process before I am skeptical of the near term availability of these products with one exception; Tego.
Tego is a small fabless silicon manufacturer based in Waltham, MA. I have personally seen read/write data to a 32 kByte tag using Tego silicon using a standard EPC Gen2 hand-held reader. They also have developed software that runs on that not only provides impressive tag data management tools and support for the aerospace maintenance history records. For aerospace suppliers required to support the Airbus and Boeing programs Tego is the only game in town. Its a good thing they are great bunch of really smart people that focus on delivering great products.
Several new product announcements at the upcoming RFID Journal Live conference. I'll be blogging about the show and be sure to highlight any announcement on this particular topic. Feel free to contact me with any comments/insight into extended memory passive RFID tags and applications.