Infineon Introduces 32-Bit Smart Card Controller with 400 kBytes Flexible EEPROM - Customer Programmable Memory Shortens Time-to-Market for New Applications to One-Third

Munich, Germany / Paris, France - November 18, 2003 - Today at the “Cartes 2003” show in Paris, Infineon Technologies (FSE/NYSE: IFX), the world's number one supplier of integrated circuits (ICs) for chip cards, announced the availability of new members of its 32-bit security controller 88 family. Featuring highly flexible on-chip memory of as much as 400 kBytes of configurable EEPROM, the new security controllers allow smart card manufacturers to ship products with new customized software configurations - equivalent to former customer-specific ROM-mask based products - in just two weeks.

The new microcontrollers feature a dedicated smart card core and are the world’s first chip card ICs manufactured in 130 nanometer process technology. Designed for state-of-the-art security and maximum performance at very low power consumption, they combine an integral security concept with flexibility and processing power to meet the demanding requirements of multi-application systems. The new smart card controllers are designed for multi-application chip cards used in mobile communications (GSM, UMTS), identity authentication and banking.

World’s first 32-Bit smart card controller with EEPROM-only memory

With the new SLE88CFX4000P, Infineon sets a milestone for chip card controllers. It combines the flexibility and convenience of Flash-like memory characterized by fast programming with the advantage of the EEPROM offering small granularity, short erase/program times, and high number of program cycles (500,000). The 88 family’s integral security concept ensures the data and code in EEPROM to be stored as securely as in ROM, with only authorized users able to re-program the card.

Compared to today’s security controllers that use a ROM mask for storing customized code the new ROM-less architecture accelerates sampling time and shortens the time-to-market period for smart card manufacturers by a factor of three, from about six weeks to a maximum of two weeks for pre-personalized products. This new memory approach, which allows fast customization with the addition of programming code and data into the EEPROM, smart card manufacturers can improve logistics operations by shortening development cycles and time for volume ramp-up.

The EEPROM is specified with very fast erase and write cycles (1.3 ms respective 1 ms) and is configurable in code and data sections with 4 kBytes granularity, enabling optimized memory usage for different projects on the same platform. This provides the flexibility to store the operating system as well as application code and data. The 400 kBytes EEPROM is, for example, configurable as 256 kBytes code and 144 kBytes data, or 320 kBytes code and 80 kBytes data, depending on the application.

“The new SLE88CFX4000P is Infineon’s response to the requirements of today’s chip card market, offering an advanced fast 32-bit architecture with large and flexible memory, supported by Infineon’s market proven integral security concept,” said Axel Deininger, Senior Director Product Marketing, Security Business Unit of the Secure Mobile Solutions Business Group at Infineon Technologies. “The architecture of the new chip card controller also provides an easy migration path to extend the family with new derivates to fulfill future market needs.”

Technical information on SLE88CFX4000P

As with all members of the 88 family, the SLE88CFX4000P is a platform for multi-application chip card systems. To meet the requirements of the highest possible security, the 88 family’s integral security concept features multiple levels of physical protection and encryption support, including the industry’s strongest DPA/SPA (Differential Power Analysis/Simple Power Analysis) countermeasures. Its on-chip Memory Management and Protection Unit (MMU) serves as a firewall to enable secure separation of adjacent application programs and data as well as other system elements. Furthermore, the MMU is the hardware basis for secure downloading of applications in the field. A very quick and efficient context/application switching mechanism allows fast switching between multiple tasks.

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 signatures with key lengths of 2,048 bits without Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT) are processed in 1.9 s (at 66 MHz), with CRT within 35 ms (at 66 MHz).

The 88 family is based on a 32-bit RISC core architecture running up to 66 MHz and 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™ and MultOS™.

To reduce card suppliers’ development costs and speed up time-to-market, the SLE88CFX4000P also provides a Platform Support Layer (PSL) stored in a 80 kBytes “hidden” ROM, 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).

The SLE88CFX4000P includes 80 KBytes of “hidden” ROM, 400 KBytes of EEPROM/Flash, 16 KBytes of RAM and a new high performance crypto co-processor. It operates at a voltage range of 1.62 to 5.5 V, in full compliance with ETSI specifications. The current consumption is only 0.35 mA/MHz internal clock frequency.

Availability

The SLE88CFX4000P will be available in Q1 2004. Besides this EEPROM-only product Infineon offers a version with additional 160 kBytes user-ROM, the SLE88CFX4002P. The products are shipped as sawn wafers or packaged in modules. For the design-in support a complete set of development tools including a Software Development Kit (SDK) and an Emulator is available.

Infineon will be present at the Cartes 2003 show (18 - 20 November 2003, Paris, France) at booth 4N003 in Hall 4. Further information on SLE88CFX4000P at: www.infineon.com/security_and_chipcard_ics

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 the 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.

Infineon and the stylized Infineon Technologies design are trademarks and service marks of Infineon Technologies AG. Any other trademarks appearing herein are the property of their respective owners.