A chip the size of a grain of rice that can store 100 pages of text and swaps data via wireless has been developed by Hewlett-Packard.
The tiny chip was small enough to embed in almost any object, said HP.
The chip could be used to ensure drugs have not been counterfeited, on patient wristbands in hospitals or to add sounds or video to postcards, said HP.
But it warned that the device was at least two years away from being a finished product.
The chip, developed by the Memory Spot research team at HP, is 2-4mm square and current versions can hold up to 512 kilobytes of data.
HP said the amount of memory onboard the tiny chip was likely to grow in future versions.
Data can be moved in and out of the chip at speeds of up to 10 megabits per second - far faster than is possible with other short-range radio systems such as Bluetooth or Radio Frequency ID tags.
View: BBC News
