Infineon launches SOLID FLASH Technology for its New Generation of Security ICs Based on 90nm Technology

“Infineon has been setting industry trends since the beginning of the smart card industry about 25 years ago. Our new SOLID FLASH technology combines proven flash technology with dedicated security features, this further proves Infineon’s innovative role,” said Helmut Gassel, President of the Chip Card & Security Division at Infineon Technologies. “By providing a comprehensive product portfolio of SOLID FLASH-based products Infineon will continue to drive the industry trend towards flexible, contactless yet secure chip solutions.”

The flexibility of the Flash technology results in significant time savings and both complexity and risk reduction over the whole value chain. With Infineon’s SOLID FLASH technology, customers benefit in various ways; for example by allowing a fast and easy prototyping, sampling and code change through the immediate availability of hardware samples with SOLID FLASH-based security controllers. Furthermore the lead times for chip production based on forecast are reduced by more than 50 percent compared to mask ROM. While inventory management of the different mask ROM versions is very complex, SOLID FLASH products can be configured by the system integrators on demand and thus the storage of only a minimum variety of non-specific Flash products is required. This results in reduced planning efforts, inventory costs and risks, and a shorter time-to-market.

In addition, the mask costs of ROM products will significantly increase with the migration to lower geometries like 90nm or 65nm, while minimum order quantities of ROM will rise due to increasing lot sizes.

Besides the listed advantages in development and logistics processes, SOLID FLASH offers a sophisticated security concept, providing a similar security level compared to mask ROM. The functional security is ensured by a secure mask transfer, secure download and a special locking mechanism, which is realized by Infineon’s specific flash loader and is certified together with the hardware. Infineon has also installed some architectural measures to ensure security on its products and to protect the memory against analysis and tearing. A hardware firewall separates code, data and other applications. In addition, the SOLID FLASH devices offer error correction, where 1-bit errors can be repaired. These specific security features make SOLID FLASH technology suitable even for high security chip card applications.

In developing SOLID FLASH, Infineon benefits from its leadership in both chip card and automotive IC technologies, as the same basic Flash cell concept both for automotive and for chip card products is used. Today, Flash-based products are already mainstream in the automotive sector, and even in safety-critical automotive applications such as braking and airbag systems, no more ROM products are designed in. Chip card and security applications will deploy the same approved Uniform Channel Program (UCP) Flash cell with high data retention (at least ten years) and endurance characteristics that have been in use for years in 220nm, 130nm and now also in the 90nm Flash products.