In development at HP Labs for about four years, Memory Spot is a memory device based on CMOS and is about the size of a grain of rice or smaller, at 2 mm to 4 mm square. Chips could be embedded or stuck on objects and make available content that is now found mostly on electronic devices or the Internet, HP said. Digital content is effectively freed from the PC and the Internet and offered on devices ranging from photos to pharmaceuticals.

HP demonstrated the technology during a presentation at HP Labs on Monday morning. The 10Mbps data transfer rate of the chip makes it 10 times faster than Bluetooth wireless technology and comparable to Wi-Fi speeds, HP said. Storage capacity ranges from 256Kb to 4Mb in prototypes.

In early versions of Memory Spot chips, short video clips could be stored as could several images or dozens of pages of texts, HP said. Power is received through inductive coupling, which is the transfer of energy from one circuit component to another through a shared electromagnetic field, HP said.

Memory Spot has various consumer and business applications, HP said. These could include:

-- Storing medical records on a hospital patient's wristband.