Product category:
Microprocessors, Microcontrollers and DSPs
News Release from: Renesas Technology Europe
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 04 February 2005
Smart card MCU leaders to standardise
software
Infineon Technologies and Renesas Technology Corp are to offer a common software interface for their 32bit families of smart card microcontrollers.
Infineon Technologies and Renesas Technology Corp, the world's number one and number two suppliers of microcontrollers for smart cards, are to offer a common software interface for their 32bit families of smart card microcontrollers Such a standardised software interface will help to accelerate the development of new smart card applications, as it enables card manufacturers to re-use their application-specific software across various smart card IC platforms, which are widely used in mobile communications applications
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 15 Apr 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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New requirements in major smart card market segments such as mobile communications, identification and access control applications demand the performance and address space of 32bit microcontrollers.
Market experts expect that the additional benefit of software compatibility will further accelerate the introduction of 32bit solutions, as the smart card industry demands chip card controllers offering high performance and EEPROM memory of at least 64Kbyte.
Compared with today where smart card manufacturers face significant investment to port their software to different hardware platforms, such a common application programmable interface (API) can significantly reduce cost and time to market when developing new smart card applications, by standardising the connection between the chip hardware and the operating system.
The API comprises a set of device drivers that provide a convenient interface to all hardware-specific peripherals of the smart card microcontroller including those for crypto coprocessors, timers, serial UART interfaces, random number generators and memory management units.
The common API will be compatible with the companies' respective 32bit smart card microcontroller families, Infineon's 88 family and Renesas' AE5 family.
As a first step, the API will offer a common interface for Renesas' Advance Crypto Library (ACL) and Infineon's Platform Support Layer (PSL).
The API is expected to be available by the second quarter of 2005.
Both Infineon and Renesas will continue to optimise the functionality of the API to offer maximum benefit for their respective IC platforms whilst maintaining compatibility with the existing PSL interface.
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