Chipcard ICs

Chipcards are mainly used to identify and authenticate a card user to a system. The identification or authentication protocol is normally based on symmetric and asymmetric cryptography. Moreover, all the data transfers between the Chipcard and the Terminal are usually protected by a Message Authentication Code (MAC) calculated with a symmetric algorithm. Triple DES is the most currently symmetric algorithm used today in smart cards. However, the new encryption standard (AES) will progressively replace the Triple DES within the next years. Thus, a very efficient AES implementation will be required in those environments where the transaction time is required to be as short as possible, as in the case of contactless applications.