Motorola chips give smartcard flexibility

Motorola has launched four chips specifically for multi-application smartcards. Two of the chips include crypto co-processors, which support the ISA encryption standard.

The MSC1000 chips boast up to 32k electronically erasable memory, which gives them the flexibility to change their functionality as new products come on the market. Motorola said a storage feature for telephone numbers was one option.

To encourage customers to develop multiple applications, Motorola also released its first software simulator for the chips, along with its standard hardware emulator. Russell McCullagh, technical marketing manager, said: "Developers can cut down their time-to-market by writing supporting software on Windows NT, before the chips are available."

Motorola's MSC1000 chip family will be in full production early next year. De la Rue and Sclumberger are already committed to using them.