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ARM targets NFC smart cards with Cortex variant

The market for secure smart-card processors is one that today runs at around 50 million units per year, and ARM believes it has the largest single share of that business with its SC100 SecurCore processor IP, licensed to 12 silicon vendors, with the single biggest application category being SIM cards. ARM is now updating that offering with the Cortex M3-based SC300, which it designed for incorporation into USB and contactless smart cards. It employs the Thumb 2 instruction set and, the company says, provides twice the performance/energy factor of its predecessor. ARM also provided it with real-time handling of multiple interfaces for high-speed and contactless applications, including SWCS (Smart Card Web Server) and NFC (Near Field Communication). The growing base of NFC applications is where, according to ARM’s Richard York, the company expects use of multi-application cards—such as large memory cards with secure interfaces— to proliferate. Designers use these to host, for example, media and music storage, and the processor must be able to support media streaming while conducting secure transactions: the SC300 provides the resources to do this, York says. By limiting the gate count and providing the ability for licensees to tune the processor’s confi guration, ARM cerated a silicon and code footprint that is no bigger than an 8-bit chip, he adds: “The energy effi ciency of the SC300 is the real justifi cation of the product.” The development tool chain is“standard ARM”, and there is a DLL that models the processor in a smart-card simulation, tuned so that on a “reasonable PC”, you can simulate a smart card in real time at 10 to 20 MHz and physically connect the simulation to a card reader. The smart-card world is, York says, still largely based on proprietary architectures: with SC300 he hopes to convert silicon vendors in the sector to ARM’s standard solution.

ARM, www.arm.com.