Infineon 32-bit Chip Card Flash Microcontrollers Wins 2006 Sesames Award for Best Hardware Innovation Category

Paris, France / Munich, Germany – November 7, 2006 – Infineon Technologies (FSE/NYSE: IFX) today announced that the Chip Card Industry has selected the company’s 32-bit security chip card flash microcontroller family as a winner of the 2006 Sesames Award in the category of Best Hardware. The award was announced on the eve of the opening exhibition day at the Cartes Trade Show in Paris.

All Sesames Awards, now in their eleventh year, honor outstanding innovations and application achievements within the chip card industry. An international panel of judges active in the chip card industry selected the individual recipients from a total of 203 companies that applied for the ten Sesames Awards. Winners are recognized in several categories including “Best Hardware,” “Best Software” and “Best Application” in eight application areas. The judges selected the Infineon 32-bit chip card flash microcontroller family out of 50 applications in the “Best Hardware” category. This category looks for the best and most innovative chip, card, token, electronic component, terminal, reader, manufacturing / printing material, representing a genuine breakthrough in the card industry.

Award-winning 32-bit flash chip card microcontrollers are certified according to Common Criteria EAL5+ high

Infineon received the award for four members of its flash security microcontrollers in its high-end 32-bit family SLE 88 due to two key factors. For the first time in history, the chip card ICs with flash-like memory offer an exceptionally high level of security and passed the world’s strictest security tests according to the Common Criteria standard at EAL 5+ high based on the BSI-PP0002 Protection Profile. Additionally, the SLE 88 security microcontrollers combine the flexibility and convenience of flash-like memory, which is characterized by fast programming and small cell size, with the advantage of the EEPROM to provide fine memory granularity for optimized memory usage of multiple applications on one card, very fast programming times and at least 500,000 program cycles.

Supporting secure and reliable administration of several applications on a card, the flash security microcontrollers have the potential to accelerate the evolution of chip-on-card products onto multi-functional chip cards, combining features such as identity cards with an authenticated driving license, banking and credit card services or bringing enhanced payment schemes and mobile TV applications onto cards used in mobile communications (GSM, UMTS).

“The integral security concept of our SLE 88 devices ensure that data and code in flash-like EEPROM are as securely stored as in ROM. This concept disproves the widespread industry mind-set that ROM memory is more secure than flash memory,” said Dr. Helmut Gassel, Vice President and General Manager of the Chip Card & Security ICs business unit at Infineon Technologies. “Infineon has managed to combine the flexibility and convenience of flash-like memory with the advantage of the EEPROM on an exceptionally secure level. This achievement will help drive industry innovation.”

There were four family members awarded, which differ in memory configurations. These products include the SLE 88CFX4002P, SLE 88CFX4000P, SLE 88CFX3520P and SLE 88CFX2920P. The SLE 88CFX4002P device is the world’s first flash chip card microcontroller that successfully passed the Common Criteria EAL 5+ high certification.

All awarded products feature an integral security concept that comprises multiple levels of physical protection. They are ideal for executing Java-based operating systems as well as calculating crypto algorithms, such as DES (Data Encryption Standard), Triple-DES, RSA (Rivest, Shamir, Adleman) and elliptic curves algorithms. An on-chip Memory Management and Protection Unit (MMU) serves as a firewall to enable secure separation of adjacent application programs, data and other system elements.

Infineon is demonstrating its award-winning products and comprehensive chip card IC portfolio at Booth #4J002 in Hall 4 at the Cartes Trade Show. For more information on the company’s show highlights at Cartes, visit www.infineon.com/cartes

Further information

More information on the 2006 Sesames Awards is available at www.cartes.com.
For further information on chip card applications using the 32-bit security microcontrollers portfolio, please visit www.infineon.com/88. Additional information on Infineon’s chip card IC and security IC portfolio is available at www.infineon.com/security.


About Infineon

Infineon Technologies AG, Munich, Germany, offers semiconductor and system solutions for automotive, industrial and multimarket sectors, for applications in communication, as well as memory products through its subsidiary Qimonda. With a global presence, Infineon operates through its subsidiaries in the US from San Jose, CA, in the Asia-Pacific region from Singapore and in Japan from Tokyo. In fiscal year 2005 (ending September), the company achieved sales of Euro 6.76 billion with about 36,400 employees worldwide. Infineon is listed on the DAX index of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker symbol: IFX).

Further information is available at www.infineon.com.
Further information on Qimonda is available at www.qimonda.com.

Information Number INFAIM200611.013

Contact Information

Reiner Schönrock

Technology & Innovation

Infineon Technologies AG

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