Philips' MIFARE® DESFire blazes a trail in the contactless smart card industry
Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) today announced that it will extend its leadership in the contactless smart card market by expanding its leading-edge MIFARE® architecture platform to include MIFARE® DESFire - a high speed, highly secure, contactless multi-application smart card silicon solution that will boost the deployment of contactless smart cards in a variety of different services.
Designed to meet the increasing demands for high speed, triple-Data Encryption Standard (DES) secured contactless ticketing solutions, MIFARE® DESFire is an ideal fit for service providers and system integrators looking to develop convenient, multi-functional smart card-based systems for use in public transportation, identity, e-government, city loyalty and e-purse schemes. The chip's core characteristics - Fast, Innovative, Reliable and sEcure, as described by the 'Fire' part of its name - are supported by a unique combination of flexible memory organisation structure alongside impressive data transaction rates making it ideal for secure contactless ticketing services.
"Service providers, system integrators and smart card manufacturers who have traditionally relied upon contact smart card technologies have begun to adopt contactless technologies that offer enhanced consumer friendly system designs alongside comparable security levels," said Reinhard Kalla, business line manager for Chip Cards, at Philips Semiconductors. "Philips' MIFARE® portfolio is the largest contactless infrastructure base in the world. The addition of MIFARE® DESFire to the portfolio provides the industry with a highly secure, high speed, cost effective silicon solution and is solid evidence of Philips' continued innovation in the contactless identification market."
MIFARE® DESFire operates at a distance of 10cms and in accordance with the international standard ISO 14443A perfectly meets mid-end transportation segment needs including security and cost effectiveness. It features a 4Kbyte non volatile memory, a high speed triple -DES data encryption co-processor, a flexible memory organisation structure, a mutual 3-pass authentication technique together with a true random number generator and an anti-tear mechanism to guarantee data integrity during contactless transactions.
Philips' MIFARE® architecture platform is the industry standard for contactless transport ticketing solutions. The platform is based on advanced technology that can be evolved to meet the needs of changing market conditions. At present there are 250 million MIFARE® cards in circulation and 1.5million installed reader/writers worldwide. The scope of Philips' MIFARE® architecture platform enables service providers to conveniently expand their networks to include a wider range of services while reducing installation and maintenance costs. High volume manufacturing processes and partnerships are in place that will ensure that MIFARE® DESFire is rapidly used in contactless systems worldwide.
Other established MIFARE smart card IC solutions like MIFARE UltraLight and MIFARE PROX offer low- and high-end solutions respectively.
A demonstration of MIFARE® DESFire will be on show at Philips' CarteS 2002 booth (3H 031 - located in Hall 3) highlighting the industry's next step for contactless chip card technology. The forthcoming CarteS 2002 exhibition and conference, will take place from 5 - 8 November 2002 at the Paris-Nord Villepinte Exhibition Centre in Paris, France. First customer samples of MIFARE DESFire will be available in Q4 2002 and production ramp up is scheduled for Q1 2003.
About Philips
Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands is one of the world's biggest electronics companies and Europe's largest, with sales of $ 28.8 billion (EUR 32.3 billion) in 2001. It is a global leader in color television sets, lighting, electric shavers, medical diagnostic imaging and patient monitoring, and one-chip TV products. Its 184,000 employees in more than 60 countries are active in the areas of lighting, consumer electronics, domestic appliances, components, semiconductors, and medical systems. Philips is quoted on the NYSE (symbol: PHG), London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and other stock exchanges. News from Philips is located at www.semiconductors.philips.com.