NXP Shares Product Roadmap and Application Know-How

By Mark Roberti

Nov 4, 2009—NXP Semiconductors, the world's largest producer of microchips used in radio frequency transponders, has shared with RFID Journal its plans for new products over the next few years. The company intends to introduce new ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) chips based on the ISO 18000-6C protocol by the end of this year, a dual-frequency chip (HF and UHF) in 2011, and the further evolution of its Mifare chips, including enhanced security.

"We remain committed to the RFID business in a big way," says Tim Newsom, NXP's director of marketing and business strategy for RFID in the Americas. "It's a healthy, profitable business for us, and we believe the market will only continue to grow."

In 2007, NXP introduced its Ucode G2XL and G2XM chips—two UHF chips based on the ISO 18000-6C standard (which is the same as EPCglobal's Gen 2 protocol) and offering a longer read range and strong use-case performance (see NXP Boosts EPC Gen 2 Tag Memory, Performance). Newsom anticipates NXP's newest ISO 18000-6C chips will perform better in applications than the top UHF chips currently available, and that the chips will begin shipping before the end of the year. "We hope to share more information very soon on the products' details," he says, "but it will offer some interesting new use cases, and continue to support the traditional ones with higher performance."

"We focused on high performance in the total use case with our previous UHF chips, and were behind the leader in pure read range," Newsom said during a meeting with RFID Journal at the company's Applications and Systems Center (ASC) in Graz, Austria (for more information on the center, see Optimizing Chip and Tag Designs in the Lab). "With these new chips, we'll improve upon the performance available today, and remain a leader in application performance."

Testing and application support conducted at NXP's ASC focuses on ensuring tags that incorporate NXP chips are fully interoperable with all application hardware and tags, including those made with competitors' chips. "We are certain our chip will not only outperform in applications," Newsom states, "it will also be fully interoperable, because of the support of the ASC."

Heinze Elzinga, NXP's director of product management, indicates that his company is "in the early phases of the development" of a new integrated circuit that will operate at both HF and UHF. "The product features have been defined," he says, "and the development team is now working on the design."