As if the various other permutations and teensyness of RFID weren't wild enough, here comes Hitachi with its new "powder" 0.05mm x 0.05mm RFID chips. The new chips are 64 times smaller than the previous record holder, the 0.4mm x 0.4mm mu-chips, and nine times smaller than Hitachi's last year prototype, and yet still make room for a 128-bit ROM that can store a unique 38-digit ID number. The main application is likely to be anti-counterfit, but since the previous mu-chips could be embedded into paper quite easily enough, we're fairly certain Hitachi is just doing this for bragging rights and potential pepper shaker mixups. Hitachi should have these on the market in two or three years.