Innovative "Chip-Sandwich" from Infineon Cited For Best Hardware Innovation; Receives Prestigious "Sesames Award" of Chip Card Industry

Nov 3, 2004 | Market News

Munich, Germany / Paris, France - November 3, 2004 - Infineon Technologies AG (FSE/NYSE: IFX) today announced that its latest chip card controller was named as best hardware innovation within the chip card industry in the year 2004 and recipient of a ‘Sesames Award’. The awards, now in their ninth year, were announced on the occasion of the “Cartes & IT Security 2004” show in Paris (November 2 - 4, 2004). It is the third time that a Sesames Award was cited to Infineon. With its partners - Sony, Trusted Logic and Visa Asia Pacific - Infineon was also among this year’s nominees for the award “Best Software”.

Infineon received the “Best Hardware” award for its new 32-bit chip card controller which provides eight times the memory capacity of today’s chip card controllers due to an innovative “chip-sandwich” technique that involves face-to-face interconnection.

The area of today’s chips used in card applications is restricted to about 25 square millimetres. Integration of extended functionality is limited and very expensive, as new manufacturing technologies have to be developed. Infineon’s technological achievement is to have opened up new performance potentials for card applications. Its awarded chip, the SLE88CFX1M00P, is expected to trigger a significant performance leap for chip cards used in mobile communications where currently the demand for additional memory capacity is greatest, due to SMS and MMS messages and the desire for more address book entries. Infineon currently supplies one in three SIM (Subscriber Identification Module) card chips worldwide.

Using its innovative face-to-face interconnection technique and other existing technologies, Infineon can build a chip card microcontroller offering more than 100 times the memory capacity of today’s chip cards ICs on just double the chip area.

In the area of chip card ICs, Infineon is the leader in technology development and product security, and, for the sixth consecutive year, is number one worldwide in terms of unit sales and turnover. In 2003, Infineon had a 53 percent share of the entire market of more of 2 billion chip card ICs, supplying about 1.1 billion units. In terms of turnover, Infineon’s market share amounted to 41 percent of the chip card IC market, which U.S. market research company Gartner put at a total of 1.26 billion U.S. dollars in 2003.

The Sesames Awards

The Sesames Awards honor outstanding achievements within the chip card industry and related industries. The Sesames Awards have become the unchallenged label, and a global standard for card manufacturers and related industries, the organizers say. In each category, an international panel of three to five jurors active in the chip card industry selected the individual recipients from a total of 126 companies that applied for the nine Sesames Awards 2004. Along with seven “Best Application” categories, the awards recognize the winners in the categories “Best Hardware” and “Best Software”.

The Sesames Award “Hardware”, which saw three nominees in 2004, is awarded to the best and most innovative card, token, chip, electronic component, terminal, automation, reader manufacturing or printing material representing a genuine breakthrough in the card industry and bringing significant benefits to potential users.

Further information on the Sesames Awards 2004 is available at http://www.cartes.com.

About Infineon

Infineon Technologies AG, Munich, Germany, offers semiconductor and system solutions for the automotive and industrial sectors, for applications in the wired communications markets, secure mobile solutions 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 fiscal year 2003 (ending September), the company achieved sales of Euro 6.15 billion with about 32,300 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

INFSMS200411.014