Security licence agreement

Infineon Technologies and ARM have signed a long-term strategic collaboration in the field of security controllers (MCU) for chip cards and security applications.

Based on the agreement, Infineon will receive an ARMv6M and ARMv7M architecture licence. With its own specialised ARM architecture-compliant CPU cores, the company will address the current and future needs of the security markets in terms of hardware-based security, combined with the advantages of the industry's most widely used 32-bit CPU technology.

Infineon is the only ARM partner to have an ARM architecture licence specifically for security applications. Under this agreement, it can integrate its security measures into the heart of the CPU core implementation, while maintaining compatibility with the standard ARM processor instruction set.

This enables code re-use and access to the wide ARM development ecosystem.

Infineon aims to have the first products in volume production by the second half of 2011, initially targeting the multimedia SIM cards market. In addition, it will combine the ARM architecture and its Integrity Guard hardware technology, designed for use in highly demanding chip card-based and security applications, in future products for high-end security segments.