At the heart of the GrandPrix platform, Impinj's Monza 5 tag chip powers over half of all UHF Gen 2 tags produced today and can be found in over 50 tag designs from every major global inlay manufacturer. Designed from the ground up for item-level tagging, Monza 5 enables low total applied tag cost and exceptional in-store performance for retail applications. Users of the Impinj GrandPrix platform will be able to seamlessly intermix tags based on Monza 5 with tags built from Impinj's future tag chip models, the first of which will be available in 2014.

"As the world's leading developer, manufacturer and supplier of RFID transponders and inlays, we support the Impinj GrandPrix platform," said Wolfgang Schneider, Member of the Management Board and Head of SMARTRAC's Electronic Product Identification (ePI) Business Unit. "Our customers benefit from products based on the Monza 5 tag chip and its superior performance and reliability."

For brand owners and service bureaus using the GrandPrix platform, Impinj is announcing the second generation of its Source Tagging Platform, STP 2.0, which enables and simplifies high-throughput, high-reliability source tagging deployments. With STP 2.0, brand owners enjoy the flexibility to decide when, where and how to serialize tags to achieve the lowest total applied tag cost, and service bureaus can deliver RFID-enabled retail trim with the same turn-around times and quality their customers expected before RFID.

When used with Monza tag chips, Impinj STP 2.0 uses pipelining, advanced error correction, extraordinary write sensitivity and other proprietary techniques to sustain printer-encoder speeds of up to 100,000 units per hour and throughput of up to 300,000 units per hour for encode-only systems. The speed and flexibility of the Impinj GrandPrix platform enable brand owners and service bureaus to economically scale source tagging with the growing number of item-level RFID initiatives.

As the foundation of enterprise-class RFID solutions, the Impinj GrandPrix platform leverages all the performance and functionality advantages of Speedway fixed readers and Indy-based RFID mobile or stationary readers. With over 50,000 units in service today, Speedway accounts for the world's largest installed base because no other UHF fixed reader can match its proven performance and reliability. For mobile solutions, Impinj's Indy reader chip family is the de facto standard with more than 80% of all handheld RFID readers today incorporating an Indy reader chip.