Press Releases (2004)
Impinj Demonstrates Working Generation 2 RFID Technology
SEATTLE, Wash., December 14, 2004 - Impinj, Inc, the fabless semiconductor company whose patented Self-Adaptive Silicon® technology enables its high-performance Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) products, today announced a significant milestone in the advancement of RFID technology with its demonstration of prototype UHF Generation 2 products on December 2, 2004 at MET Laboratories, the certification partner of EPCglobal Inc™.
Gen 2, the newest and most advanced of the EPCglobal RFID specifications for the UHF (ultra-high-frequency) band, is the preferred standard of many worldwide retailers. Innovations in the Gen 2 protocol enable performance improvements necessary for large scale RFID deployment while resolving limitations of older RFID specifications — Class 0 and Class 1 —such as those associated with high-density reader environments, global regulatory compliance, tag throughput, rewritability, security, privacy and robustness. Impinj not only demonstrated a simulator that showed tag and reader communication surpassing Class 1 throughput performance by almost 10 times, but the company also demonstrated reader hardware that implements advanced modulation waveforms spectrally compliant with both US and European regulations as required by the Gen 2 specification.
"The Gen 2 protocol benefited from years of optimization, and Impinj is pleased to leverage that work while developing tag and reader prototypes that help the industry achieve this important milestone. We look forward to the formal ratification of the Gen 2 standard and its rapid adoption by the world's leading retailers," said Dr. William Colleran, president and CEO of Impinj.
Impinj's Gen 2 products will be available in the second quarter of 2005. The company's RFID product line includes ZumaRFID™ silicon, the world's first EPCglobal Class 0 solution to provide many features anticipated in the Generation 2 specification. Now available in production-volume quantities, ZumaRFID supports long-range, high-speed rewritability with up to 144 bits of lockable user memory and includes consumer privacy features such as the ability to disable or "kill" fielded tags under consumer control. Impinj works with industry-leading partners to provide tags, inlays and readers for complete RFID solutions.
About Impinj, Inc.
Impinj, Inc. is a fabless semiconductor company whose patented Self-Adaptive Silicon® technology enables its two synergistic business lines: high performance RFID products and cost-effective semiconductor intellectual property (SIP). Impinj's semiconductor chips power high performance, enhanced-functionality RFID systems that fulfill the global mandates promulgated by the consumer packaged goods and retailing industries. The company is a leading contributor to the emerging RFID standards for high volume supply-chain applications worldwide. Impinj's innovative SIP products, core to the company's RFID tags, are licensed to leading semiconductor companies worldwide, allowing them to cost-effectively integrate crucial nonvolatile memory (NVM) alongside analog and digital functionality on a single chip. Impinj's SIP products include the popular AEON™ memory, the world's first rewritable NVM technology compatible with logic CMOS manufacturing. For more information, visit www.impinj.com.