Pitching for the ultimate embedded application, Advanced RISC Machines Ltd, Cambridge has joined forces with Gemplus SA of Gemenos, France to propose development of a 32-bit Smart Card that would use the ARM RISC. The partners are seeking $10m of funding over three years under the European Eureka programme. The project would require a further shrinking of the already small core of the RISC to squeeze it into the card cavity. The proponents believe that future Smart Card applications will require more processing power than that offered by the 8-bit microcontrollers now used in cards.
