Oki Semiconductor Launches ARM-Based Microcontroller that Reduces Encryption/Decryption Time for IC Card Terminals

Sunnyvale, Calif., April 10, 2006 - Oki Semiconductor, a leading technology partner for the new era of digital communications and convergence, today announced the launch of its ARM®-based ML675050 microcontroller, an application specific LSI (ASSP) that integrates all functions necessary in IC card terminals into a single chip. The chip is equipped with a Modulo Calculation Accelerator necessary in RSA cryptography, and significantly reduces the encryption/decryption time compared to the conventional method using software.

“The IC terminal market is expected to grow 20 percent on a year-to-year basis*, with increasing demands for encryption capable terminals as IC card devices are becoming connected to the network. We believe our ML675050 MCU is an optimum solution for applications with built-in network IC card reader/writers that require secure and safe transactions, such as credit card terminals, IC (ID) card terminals, and portable payment terminals,” said Masahiko Morioka, president, Silicon Solutions Company at Oki Electric. “We will continue to leverage the features of ARM CPU and Oki’s strength in accelerator development technologies, physical security technologies, and to provide products to the worldwide IC card terminal and security device markets.”

ARM-based MCUs, known for their high performance, low power consumption, and their instruction repertoire that can effectively use the program storage memory, has been used in various mobile phones, and PDAs worldwide. Oki’s ML675050 is a single chip 32-bit general-purpose microcontroller using ARM7TDMI® as a core, and was developed based on µPLAT®-7D, Oki’s system LSI integrated development platform. By combing the chip with a 8KB cache memory, the ML675050 achieves a high performance. The chip can also be used in portable payment terminals that require battery drives because the chip includes abundant methods for power saving, effectively controlling power according to the usage.

Product Features

With the following features listed below, designers can reduce their total cost using Oki’s ML675050 MCU:

»	Equipped with Modulo Calculation Accelerator required for RSA encryption. The accelerator enables high-speed encryption, reducing the RSA encryption time from 14ms to 0.6ms for a 1024-bit key compared to Oki’s software-based encryption using Oki’s ARM9 MCU (120MHz) RSA decryption time is also reduced from 267ms to 20ms under the same conditions.
»	Battery back-up RAM for storing crypto-key data, which contains a separated power supply terminal. When the ML675050 is separated from Printed Circuit Board (PCB), the stored crypto-key date will disappear.
»	A comprehensive set of peripherals integrates functions for IC card terminals into a single chip.
»	Equipped with USB2.0 full-speed host controller and device controller, Oki’s ML675050 is the only MCU product that achieves connectivity with host systems and connects with USB devices such as bar code readers. It integrates all the functions necessary for IC card terminals into a single chip by combining peripheral functions including Monochrome LCD controllers and I2C controllers.

Tools Support

Sample code for Oki’s ML675050 is available in ARM Development Suite™ and ARM RealView Development Suite formats. Additional sample code from IAR Systems will be available in the third quarter of 2006.

Product Availability

Samples are available from today to the worldwide market, with volume production scheduled in June 2006.

About Oki Semiconductor

Building on Oki's century-long commitment to communications technologies and markets, Oki Semiconductor designs and markets a broad line of advanced integrated circuits for telecommunications, network, automotive, computer and consumer products. Oki's product lines include telecommunications, RF, laser, networking, speech synthesis, ASIC, microcontroller and memory devices, offered in a variety of creative packages. Founded in 1977 and headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., Oki Semiconductor is a division of Oki America Inc., which is a subsidiary of Oki Electric Industry Co, Ltd. Oki has ISO-9000-certified manufacturing facilities in Japan and Thailand. Information on Oki Semiconductor and its products is available at www.okisemi.com/us.