SST Announces Theseus Titanium 240 Smart Card IC for GSM Mobile Applications
November 14, 2007 // Published as a news service by IHS
Silicon Storage Technology Inc. (SST) added the Theseus Titanium 240 to its line of Theseus Titanium smart card integrated circuits (ICs). The device offers 240 KB of user-configurable memory (UCM) based on the SST patented SuperFlash technology.
According to SST, this gives developers of subscriber identity module (SIM) cards for 3G and global system for mobile communications (GSM) network operators more storage capacity to house their applications.
The Theseus Titanium 240 uses a performance-optimized architecture and offers a low-power design with security features to increase battery life in handsets while ensuring that sensitive data remains secure, SST said.
The Theseus Titanium 240 can enable a 64 K Java Card SIM implementation or a 128 K SIM card with a native operating system, giving GSM mobile network operators a single SIM card that can support open operating systems or their own proprietary operating system.
According to data from Frost & Sullivan, the 64 K Java SIM card market is the largest volume SIM card segment and is forecast to remain the largest segment over the next four years.
"Theseus Titanium 240's memory capacity, performance, security and development tool support make it a complete smart card IC solution to address the largest SIM segment," said Mike Briner, senior vice president, Not AND (NAND) and smart card module business at SST.
"This competitive offering is becoming increasingly important to SIM card developers as more mobile subscribers move to higher-end services," Briner said.
The Theseus Titanium 240 smart card IC uses an 8051 controller core that allows four clocks per instruction cycle. It also has a 60 MHz internal oscillator.
According to SST, because Theseus Titanium 240 uses flash memory, it is secure from chemical reverse engineering. The instant programmability of flash memory allows smart card operating systems to remove insecure back doors that are required when read-only (ROM) memory is used.
To further protect data on the smart card, the Theseus Titanium 240 also includes the following security features:
- Secure memory blocks that prohibit write and erase and that cannot be read from outside blocks.
- Protection from environmental conditions through the use of voltage regulators and frequency, temperature ultraviolet light and glitch detectors.
- An encrypted loader application to protect the operating system during third-party programming.
To assist software developers with the creation of operating systems and applications for Theseus Titanium smart card ICs, SST offers software development platforms. The Theseus emulator provides source-level debug and stand-alone device emulation of the Theseus Titanium family of smart card ICs.
The emulator supports the ability to debug smart card code in a fully functioning card reader system. Additional development tools include probe adaptors for both International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 7816 and SIM/universal SIM (U-SIM) format interfaces, and the Pathfinder-51 source level debugger software. Theseus Titanium devices are also supported within the Keil µVision 3 development environment.
Samples of the Theseus Titanium 240 smart card IC are available now, with volume production scheduled for 1Q 2008.
Source: Silicon Storage Technology Inc. (SST).