Shawn Rogers, director of secure RF products Texas Instruments, says the next generation contactless smart card chip will be faster, have greater memory and use less power. Rogers made the comments during the Future of Secure Documents 20008 conference in Chicago Sept. 8 through Sept. 10.
They also won’t cost any more than then integrated circuit chips available now. “If you’re walking into an existing market you have to deal with the price constraints already in place,” he says.
The need for greater memory and speed is necessary as more electronic passports are used at border crossings. U.S. Department of Homeland Security Sec. Michael Chertoff says he wants the passports to be read in loess than five seconds.
Now it takes five to eight seconds for the transaction to be processed with passports using basic access control and eight to 14 seconds for passports with extended access control. That might not seem like a lot of time, but it can add up when hundreds of people are in a line waiting to get past a customer checkpoint.
Texas Instruments is working on next generation technology that will increase the speed and functionality, Rogers says. The newer chips will use 16-bit microcontrollers while current chips use 8-bit processors.
There’s also a new type of memory that Texas Instruments is working with: FRAM – Ferro-electric Random Access Memory. Chips using this type of memory can write 1,000 times faster than traditional EEPROM memory and read three times faster. They technology also sues less power, 1.5 volts compared to 10 to 14 volts for EEPROM.
Rogers says these new chips should be available in 2009. ![[end]](/resources/bullet/archive-4.gif)
