Impinj's Gen 2 RFID Monza Tag Chips and Speedway Readers Earn EPCglobal Interoperability Certification

-- Leading Gen 2 RFID solution provider, Impinj, Inc., today announced that EPCglobal Inc., the not-for-profit standards organization dedicated to driving global adoption of the Electronic Product Code (EPC) for supply chain excellence, has awarded interoperability marks to Monza™ tag chips and Speedway™ readers, certifying that these Impinj products comply with EPCglobal’s Gen 2 standard and interoperate with other certified devices.

Third-party testing firm MET Laboratories conducted EPCglobal’s product interoperability testing as part of an extensive hardware certification and standards compliance program for RFID chips, tags, readers, and printers. MET Laboratories also performed EPCglobal’s RFID Gen 2 compliance testing in September 2005, awarding Gen 2 compliance certification marks to Impinj’s Monza chip and Speedway reader at that time. Impinj is the only company to have earned Gen 2 interoperability certification for both tag chips and readers.

“The EPCglobal community developed this program to provide a neutral and authoritative source for testing hardware products and providing information regarding certified products and the vendors who manufacture them,” said Chris Adcock, president of EPCglobal Inc. “The purpose of this program is to enable end users to be confident that the certified hardware products which they implement, will work in predictable ways as defined by EPCglobal standards, such as the UHF Gen 2 Air Interface Protocol Standard.”

Monza chips and Speedway readers enable “Powered by Impinj” solutions available from a variety of RFID vendors and are key components of recent RFID deployments. Impinj has shipped Monza chips in high volume to the industry’s leading RFID tag and inlay vendors worldwide since the Fall of 2005. Production quantities of the Speedway reader are available from Impinj’s value-added reseller (VAR) and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partners.

“Interoperability has been a cornerstone of Impinj’s product development, so we are very pleased to receive interoperability certification from EPCglobal for our Monza chip and Speedway reader,” said Dimitri Desmons, Impinj vice president of RFID marketing. “Despite the obvious advantages of assuring interoperability among products, not all RFID vendors have been able to achieve certification from EPCglobal for both compliance with the Gen 2 specification and interoperability with products from other vendors. By earning both certifications, Impinj assures our customers that their Impinj-powered tags and readers interoperate with other Gen 2-certified products.”

Impinj, Inc. is a semiconductor and RFID company whose patented Self-Adaptive Silicon® technology enables its two synergistic business lines: high performance RFID products and semiconductor intellectual property (IP). A leading contributor to the RFID standards for high volume supply-chain applications worldwide, Impinj leverages its technical expertise and industry partnerships to deliver the GrandPrix™ solution, comprising tags, readers, software and systems integration to offer RFID that just works™. Impinj’s innovative IP products, core to the company’s RFID tags, are licensed to leading semiconductor companies worldwide, allowing them to seamlessly integrate crucial nonvolatile memory (NVM) alongside analog and digital functionality on a single chip. Impinj's IP products include the popular AEON® family of embeddable cores, which provides rewriteable NVM technology in logic CMOS manufacturing. For more information, visit www.impinj.com.