The RFID dream is for everything to get a tag. But can we ever get to the point where they will be cheap enough to be more attractive than a barcode?
On a damp, cold day in March 2024, the Princess Royal from the UK royal family arrived at the site of a former plastic pipe factory south of Durham in north-east England to cut the ribbon for its tech sector replacement.
Pragmatic Semiconductor’s new facility represents the first 300mm chipmaking plant to be built in the UK. But it’s a very different proposition to the 300mm chips Intel, TSMC and other fabs are building: the Durham plant does not handle silicon wafers. Pragmatic wants to take advantage of the economies of scale that come with the way silicon production works – but using a technology that, in principle, is inherently cheaper, not least because its energy demand is a fraction of that of most chip production. Although the company, in its work with research institute Imec, has demonstrated full microprocessors built on top of...