NXP ships one billionth ICODE chip

EINDHOVEN, THE NETHERLANDS: NXP Semiconductors announced a major milestone for its ICODE product line, as the company successfully shipped over its billionth ICODE chip.

As one of the most popular RFID chip on the market, NXP’s ICODE interface platform has become the first choice for high frequency (HF) smart tag and label solutions. As a result, the technology is regularly used around the world in more than 3000 libraries to keep track of books and other library media.

ICODE-powered tags and labels also effectively identify patients, track medical devices and tag blood samples within hospitals, and support the tracking and tracing of components within factory automation environments.

To continue the success of the ICODE family, NXP has now launched the ICODE SLIx platform, which is pushing beyond existing limits of RF performance and offering enhanced flexibility and 100 percent backward compatibility with existing solutions.

“More than one billion ICODE HF RFID ICs shipped is an impressive achievement for NXP and reflects the strong HF adoption ABI has observed within the broader RFID industry,” states Michael Liard, Practice Director, RFID, at ABI Research (Oyster Bay, NY, USA). “The addition of ICODE SLIx to NXP’s HF RFID IC portfolio solidifies the company’s commitment to continued innovation and performance improvement in the HF tag and label market.”

“NXP is very proud to have reached this important milestone within our business for tag and label applications. Since the initial ICODE product launch, it’s been incredible watching the demand for the technology grow as it became a viable business option across numerous industries,” said Chris Feige, general manager, tagging and authentication product line, NXP Semiconductors.

“Our new ICODE platform combines our expertise and research as we drive forward as the leader in RFID ICs, helping us create a product with the lowest possible power consumption and best-in-market read range.”

With the launch of the ICODE SLIx, NXP has introduced various new features unique to the market for HF tags and labels. ICODE SLIx provides up to 20 percent higher read range than existing ICODE SLI products. All different chip configurations are also available in high capacitance versions for smaller label designs.

ICODE SLIx provides a unique set of value-added custom commands including 32-bit password capability for Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS) and for the standardized Application Family Identifier (AFI). These two functionalities are broadly used in library installations to efficiently protect library media from intentional change and theft.

The ICODE SLIx has been designed to be fully backward compatible with existing SLI commands and is therefore usable in all existing ICODE SLI installations.

ICODE SLIx ICs are available in volume from NXP in the second quarter of 2010.