NEW ORLEANS--At the CardTech/SecurTech conference here today, the U.S. chip division of Sharp Electronics Corp. previewed a next-generation smart card IC, which integrates 1 megabit of flash memory, a 16-bit core processor, and dedicated cryptoprocessing unit.
"Existing smart card technologies are mostly dependent on ROM and EEPROM combinations," said Robert Stuart, product manager at Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas in Camas, Wash. "Therefore, most of the applications must be inserted into ROM at early manufacturing stages, limiting flexibility and increasing time to market.
"Smart cards, based on Sharp's flash memory technology, can be fully programmed at the latest stages of the issuance process, providing smart card manufacturers and system integrators with unprecedented flexibility," Stuart said. "The technology is also fully geared to support open operating systems and post issuance frameworks."
For biometric identification, the Sharp smart card module can store both vector data and full image data of fingerprints, as well as the required recognition algorithms, the company said. For facial recognition, Sharp's chip can store a series of facial pictures, can easily renew the picture data and can also integrate portions of the recognition algorithm in the card.
Sharp said its integrated cryptographic coprocessor is optimized for acceleration of a wide range of asymmetric algorithms, including elliptic curves.
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