Unsurpassed Computing Power and Leading-Edge Security Capability for Multi-Application Chip Cards: Infineon Technologies Introduces 32-bit Chip Card Controller Family

Oct 23, 2001 | Market News

Munich, Germany / Paris, France – October 23, 2001 – Infineon Technologies (FSE/NYSE: IFX), the world's leading supplier of integrated circuits (ICs) for chip cards, today announced at Cartes 2001 show in Paris the availability of the first member of its security controller 88 family. The products are designed for multi-application chip cards used in electronic banking, mobile communications and identity authentication. The new 88 family combines a high-performance 32-bit core architecture and an integral security concept to meet the demanding requirements of multi-application systems.

The first IC in the 88 family, the SLE88CX720P, sets a new standard in performance and flexibility for chip card controllers. It optimally meets customer requirements for large fixed and re-programmable memory, Virtual Machine Language acceleration to execute application code written in JavaSC™ and other stack-oriented languages. Simplified software development facilitates faster time-to-market, and exceptional security functionality adds further customer benefits. The IC is based on a 32-bit RISC CPU running at frequencies of up to 66 MHz. This provides the performance headroom needed to assure that card suppliers’ investments in software development can be deployed across a wide range of current and future systems.

„The chip card industry seeks to provide systems supporting robust and secure high-performance applications in the fast growing financial services and mobile communications markets. These performance requirements surpass the capability of current 16-bit architecture products,“ said Dr. Hermann Eul, senior vice president and general manager of the Security & Chip Card IC Business Group of Infineon Technologies. „Building on the advantages of our unique system-on-chip design capability and efficient manufacturing processes, we are able to deliver true 32-bit performance and on-chip memory exceeding competitive offerings, at just a small cost premium compared to 16-bit alternatives.“

The 88 family is based on a workstation-like core architecture, incorporating on-chip data and instruction caches to support fast program execution by pre-fetching instructions. It accelerates all Virtual Machine-based chip card languages, including JavaSC™, MultOS™ and Windows Powered Smart Cards™. The chip architecture also is optimized to run multiple tasks in parallel, including peripheral functions such as external communications through the on-chip UART and execution of data encryption and security functions.

To meet requirements for the highest possible security, the 88 family’s integral security concept combines multiple levels of physical protection and encryption support, including the industry’s strongest DPA/SPA (Differential Power Analysis/Simple Power Analysis) countermeasures. The on-chip Memory Management Unit (MMU) incorporates hardware firewalls to isolate and protect applet code from other system elements. In order to support symmetric and asymmetric algorithms, the controller features powerful crypto coprocessors with highest performance for DES (Data Encryption Standard), Triple-DES, RSA (Rivest, Shamir, Adleman) and elliptic curves algorithms. RSA algorithms with key lengths of 1.024 bits are processed in 65 milliseconds without Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT).

To reduce card suppliers’ development costs and speed time-to-market, Infineon also provides a Platform Support Layer (PSL), which is a complete set of low-level drivers for all peripherals and a crypto library for RSA, elliptic curves and AES (Advanced Encryption Standard).

Additional members of the 88 family will be announced in 2002.

Technical information on SLE88CX720P


The first member of the 88 family, the SLE88CX720P, includes 240 Kbytes of ROM, 80 Kbytes of EEPROM, 8 Kbytes of RAM, a crypto coprocessor, and UART with two I/Os. It operates at a voltage range of 1.8 to 5.0 V, in full compliance with ETSI specifications.

Availability


Engineering samples of the SLE88CX720P will be available in December 2001 with volume production planned in Q1 2002. The product is shipped as sawn wafers or packaged in modules.

The SLE88CX720P is one of the three projects nominated for the prestigious SESAMES award in the category Best Technological Innovation. Every year at Cartes show, this award is presented to honor technical achievement and innovation within the card industry and card-related industry.

Infineon will be present at Cartes 2001 show (23.-25. October 2001, Paris, France) at booth U44 in Hall Curie.

All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Further information on SLE88CX720P at www.infineon.com/security_and_chipcard_ics

About Infineon


Infineon Technologies AG, Munich, Germany, offers semiconductor and system solutions for applications in the wired and wireless communications markets, for security systems and smartcards, for the automotive and industrial sectors, as well as memory products. With a global presence, Infineon operates in the US from San Jose, CA, in the Asia-Pacific region from Singapore and in Japan from Tokyo. In the fiscal year 2000 (ending September), the company achieved sales of Euro 7.28 billion with about 29,000 employees worldwide. Infineon is listed on the DAX index of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker symbol: IFX). Further information is available at www.infineon.com

Information Number

INFCC200110.002 e