MCUs upgrade smart card applications

Two new smart card microcontrollers incorporate high-performance high-security 32bit CPU cores and large capacity EEPROM.

New from Renesas Technology Europe, the AE57C1 and AE58C smart card microcontrollers incorporate a high performance, high-security 32bit CPU core and the company's largest capacity EEPROM.

They also offer mask ROM and peripheral functions.

The microcontrollers are suitable for use in smart cards such as third generation mobile phone USIM cards and multi-application cards.

The two new microcontrollers incorporate an AE-5 CPU core for smart card microcontroller use.

This has a 32bit ALU and internal bus width, executing one instruction per cycle at a maximum internal operating frequency of 16MHz.

This provides ample power for the processing of a general purpose OS such as Java Card or Multos.

The devices include 144Kbyte (AE57C1) and 288Kbyte (AE58C) of Renesas Technology's well-established proprietary MONOS EEPROM.

This enables the incorporation of a general purpose OS and multiple applications, as well as the storage of large volumes of data.

In addition, both products have a large 480Kbyte of on-chip mask ROM, allowing for increased capacity requirements associated with general purpose OS version upgrades, for example.

The AE57C1 and AE58C are the first AE-5 series models to support 1.8V low voltage operation in addition to current 5 and 3V operation, making them ideal for use in portable devices operating on increasingly lower voltages.

The two devices provide a DMAC supporting high-speed communications, reducing the load on the CPU, and on-chip security features including an AES coprocessor capable of executing the latest encryption processing and an exponential multiplication/division algorithm coprocessor.

Both products are fully compatible with the current AE57C and maintain upward compatibility with Renesas Technology's 8bit AE-3 series and 16bit AE-4 series, enabling existing software resources to be used.

This helps to shorten development times and reduce development costs.

The E6000H full emulator and SE-I simple emulator are available as development tools.

The AE57C1 and AE58C can be shipped in wafer or COT (chip on tape) form.

Sample shipments will begin in November 2005 for the AE57C1 and in January 2006 for the AE58C.

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