Impinj and Alien Technology Announce Supply Agreement for RFID Chips

Impinj, Inc., the fabless semiconductor company whose patented Self-Adaptive Silicon technology enables its high performance radio-frequency identification (RFID) products and Alien Technology Corporation, a market leader in UHF RFID tags, today announced a long-term agreement under which Impinj will provide its Monza Generation 2 (Gen 2) chips for inclusion in Aliens RFID inlay and strap products.

Monza, part of Impinjs GrandPrix solution for robust RFID systems, is the worlds first tag chip designed according to the Gen 2 standard promulgated by EPCglobal Inc., the industry consortium established to promote RFID in the global supply chain.

Alien Technology uses its patented manufacturing process, Fluidic Self Assembly (FSA), to fabricate RFID inlays and straps in unprecedented volumes at very low cost. Utilizing Impinjs Monza chips, Alien will produce high performance inlays and straps targeting global customers in government, retail, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, transportation and other industries.

Alien has established itself as a market leader in RFID for EPC applications, and is especially effective in using their FSA technology to address the tag assembly challenge faced by the RFID industry, said Dr. William Colleran, president and CEO, Impinj. Under this arrangement, both Alien and Impinj leverage our complementary strengths Impinjs chip design prowess and Aliens assembly capability to deliver very high performance RFID products at competitive cost. We are delighted to announce our relationship which we expect will provide differentiated products that meet current and future market needs.

Our collaboration with Impinj on Gen 2 products is a natural extension of our combined efforts in the EPC standards development process, remarked Dr. Steve Smith, CTO and Founder, Alien Technology Corporation. We are impressed by the time-to-market and performance of Impinjs Monza silicon, and we look forward to offering the first high volume, low cost production availability of Gen 2 tags and inlays in the industry to our meet customers needs.

Impinjs Monza chips provide the benefits enabled by the Gen 2 protocol. In addition, Monza features excellent range, robustness and the option for tags that are less orientation sensitive when used in a dual antenna configuration. Monza was designed to ensure excellent RF impedance and ESD insensitivity, which in turn enable high speed inlay and strap manufacturing. Alien expects to sample Monza-based inlays and straps in September with volume shipments commencing in 4Q 2005.