STMicroelectronics introduced two new secure microcontrollers designed specifically for high-volume 2.5G and 3G SIM cards. The ST21Y036 and ST21Y144 provide 36 Kbytes and 144 Kbytes of user EEPROM, respectively, and they join the ST21Y068, which was announced towards the end of 2006 and is already in volume production.
The new devices include a hardware DES (Data Encryption Standard) accelerator and user-accessible CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Code) calculation block. The user EEPROM areas – which include 64 bytes of user OTP (One Time Programmable) memory – use highly reliable CMOS submicron technology, and provide 10-year data retention with a typical Erase/Write endurance of 500,000 cycles.
ST said operators need secure SIM products with increased memory capacity to store and handle the large amounts of data now used in a growing number of applications and services in mobile communications products, while maintaining overall performance and user-friendliness. http://www.st.com
