Infineon Technologies AG (Infineon) and Renesas Technology Corp. (Renesas) is the world's number one and second smart card microcontroller supplier, today they announced their 32-bit smart card microcontrollers offer a common software interface. Such a standard software interface makes the card manufacturer's proprietary 2GB MP5 software can be widely used in a variety of mobile communications smart card IC platforms, re-use, helping to accelerate the development of new smart card applications.

    The major smart card market segments such as mobile communication, identification and access control applications, the new demands, and promoted the 32-bit microcontroller performance and address space needs. Market experts predict that the additional benefit of software compatibility will further accelerate the 32-bit solutions, as the smart card industry demands chip card controllers offering high performance and at least 64K:

    And now the smart card manufacturers face to their 4GB MP5 software to different hardware platforms, compared to the huge investment, such a general programmable interface (API) through the standardization of chip connection between the hardware and operating systems in the development of new smart card applications can be greatly to cut costs and shorten time to market. API includes a set of device drivers, you can for all smart card microcontroller, application specific hardware peripherals provide a convenient interface, including for cryptographic co-processors, timers and serial UART interfaces, random number generators and memory management unit interface.

    Common API with the two companies the corresponding 32-bit smart card microcontroller family - Infineon Technologies and Renesas Technology's 88 series is compatible with AE5 family. As a first step, API library for Renesas Technology's Advanced Encryption (ACL) and Infineon's Platform Support Layer (PSL) provide a common interface. In the second quarter of 2005 is expected to provide API.

    Infineon and Renesas 8GB MP5 Technology will continue to optimize the API functions, the corresponding IC platform to offer the greatest advantage, while maintaining compatibility with the existing PSL interface.