23 May, 2005
category: Government, RFID
“The downside is that the cost of EPC Gen 2 tags will be higher than Gen 1 tags. Here’s why. A Gen 2 microchip will have about 40,000 transistors, compared with just 12,000 for a microchip used in a Gen 1 Class 1 EPC tag. Silicon chips for Gen 2, if made with the same fabrication processes used for Gen 1 tags, would be nearly twice as large. (The chips would not be more than three times as large because only about a third of the chip is used for digital circuitry. The rest is used for a charge pump, voltage regulator and other elements that don’t shrink as easily as circuits.) “