Microcontroller moves to next phase in France

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Jan 11, 2007

Atmel Corp has delivered volume quantities of its AT90SC12836RCT secure microcontroller for the new generation Vitale 2 French National Health Card.

Atmel Corp has delivered volume quantities of its AT90SC12836RCT secure microcontroller for the new generation Vitale 2 French National Health Card.

The AT90SC12836RCT incorporates 36Kbyte of EEPROM, 128Kbyte of ROM program memory and 5Kbyte of RAM on chip.

The processor is based on Atmel's secureAVR family using an 8/16bit RISC core and the AdvX crypto accelerator for increased PKI performance and security.

The AT90SC12836RCT has been granted Common Criteria certification EAL4+ augmented to AVA_VLA.4.

The Sagem Defense Security smart cards business unit (now Sagem Orga) selected Atmel's secureAVR architecture in March 2004 for this prestigious contract.

With over 910 million claim forms produced yearly and over 225,000 health professionals using electronic transmission in France, the Sesam-Vitale system is constantly evolving.

This evolution has led to a new generation of cards: the Vitale 2, which allows practitioners during consultation to sign invoices and securely access personal medical files.

Accesses to these files are highly secured thanks to the increased PKI performance of the chip and its EAL4+ certification.

Within this nationwide health insurance programme, approximately 60 million Vitale 2 cards will be shipped to French citisens over the next four years.

"After delivering over 50 million secure microcontrollers from the beginning of the Vitale 1 programme, Atmel remains a major supplier of the Vitale French national health card and reinforces once again its strong leadership position in government and security markets", said Michel Bartosik, EMEA Business Development Manager for Atmel's Secure Products Division.

"The Vitale 2 is the first card based on interoperability specifications in compliance with IAS (Identification, Authentication and Signature) standards".

"This concept should enable a larger deployment of health cards in other countries".