Secure Microprocessor – ESC 2011
May 4, 2011, Embedded Systems Conference, San Jose, CA—We talked to Inside Secure at the embedded conference. They make a number of digital security chips outward-facing security applications for access, identification, and storage.
This fabless company is entirely focused on secure semiconductor platforms for digital security market including secure payment via contactless chips and security for SOC products. The kids are in consumer devices like USB drives, bank cards, and even passports. The infrastructure devices are in ATMs, point-of-sale terminals and other areas for financial transactions, as well as conditional access solutions such as pay-TV.
They run products through Global Foundries, UMC, and LFoundry on processes including 350 nm, 150 nm, 130 nm, and 90 nm. They have developed complete ecosystems for some of their near field communications (NFC) security products for mobile. These solutions include multiple standards compliant silicon, partnerships with financial organizations, and an open-source NFC stack that’s been ported to Android, Win mobile, Linux, and others.
The portfolio for payment market solutions include contact and contactless, low-power chips. They acquired the secure 8/16-bit architectures from Atmel and have security certifications for the various product lines. They also build up their own modules and have families of turnkey solutions in many areas. They have reference designs and software development kits for the secure microcontrollers.
Their latest product offering is a secure, embedded microcontroller for USB authentication token applications. This chip includes an 8/16-bit RISC CPU, and is Common Criteria EAL4+ ready. An integrated hardware random generator supports AES,DES, triple-DES encryption and supports elliptic curve up to 4096 bits. It also includes the USB 2.0 interface, so the only additional requirement would be for some memory to hold the authentication tokens.
