Japanese semiconductor maker Hitachi Ltd has announced the H8/3166 chip, a microcontroller for smart cards, targeting banks that offer multiple financial applications, such as credit, debit, loyalty and some e-purse programs. Hitachi said the new chip extends its 0.35-micron CMOS product roadmap, featuring two kilobytes of EEPROM integrated memory, 256 bytes of additional EEPROM, 32 kilobytes of ROM and one kilobyte of RAM.
The EEPROM integrated memory makes the new chip suitable for single and dual application cards, it went on, while the size of the RAM and ROM on board make possible software implementations in high-level languages such as C or Java, reducing time to market.
In addition, Hitachi is also launching the H8/3161, a version with a different memory configuration, targeted at cards with other applications including health care. This chip has four kilobytes of EEPROM integrated memory.
