Slashdot Mirror

apologies. it was intel. https://www.infineon.com/cms/e...

Efficient Power Conversion (EPC)

GaN Systems

Transphorm

Panasonic

Infineon

Disclaimer: I work for one of the listed companies. We welcome new members to the GaN club!

I apologize to the ones that I missed.

Infineon does not make cell-phone or computer CPU's. They do however create smart card controllers and security controllers that contain a CPU.

Smart card controllers do have some rather specific security design constraints though (the high end Infineon SLE66 obviously did not have enough not to be hacked though: look for Christopher Tarnovsky and watch the video).

So there might be an awful lot of phones out there with Infineon CPU's, but they are in the SIM card :)

Googling Infineon SIM brought up this press release:

http://www.infineon.com/cms/en/corporate/press/news/releases/2007/INFAIM200711-014.html

seems like Intel and Infineon are on rather friendly terms.

One company is buckling to industry pressure and including DRM, the other has a fricking Trusted Platform Module in every new computer it makes. The double standard is infuriating.

TPM isn't restricted to the Apple line, so there's no double standard. A quote from https://www.trustedcomputinggroup.org/faq/TPMFAQ/:

Are systems with TPMs available?
Desktop, notebook and tablet PCs with TPMs are available from Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Intel, Lenovo, Toshiba and others.

More here and here. In fact, it's becoming more difficult to find a manufacturer that *doesn't* implement a TPM.

Besides, it's not the addition of a chip on the motherboard that's the problem, rather how and where it's used. As far as I'm aware, it's currently unused on Apple hardware; Microsoft however require it for BitLocker in Vista.

That is incorrect. The most commonly used TPM chip is the Infineon one, and it sits squarely on your motherboard. Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Modu le and http://www.infineon.com/tpm/ .

Well, there's the PPC chip in the XBox 360, for one. That's a full TCPA system.

Pretty sure that's wrong. Infineon makes the TPM chip for the xbox 360.
One of many mentions of the chip - no part number, but then I only spent 30 seconds googling for confirmation.

He also notes that some portions of TCPA are already in your CPU

While necessary to implement TCPA, those are not at all functions of the TPM.

That and cost saving is exactly why it'll be part of your CPU, if it isn't already.

Sounds like the party line. As long as the current TPM modules are supported, it won't matter if others eventually are integrated into CPUs - somebody could put a "TPM server" on the net and support thousands of users - maybe not all simultaneously, but the need for such a server would not be constant - only long enough to extract the protected information from the virtualized "trusted system."

Ok, I gonna give some specs, so we can know what are we talking about:
A TPM is a microcontroller that can do RSA and some hashing functions (SHA1).
Its installed on most new notebooks, like all the Apple Macbooks. My HP Laptop has one, the Infineon SLB 9635. It has all kind of tampering protections, like an active random number signal shielding, etc. Specs are Here .
It is not a Crypto accelerator. Typically a TPM chip is *slower* than a equivalent cipher operation realized on the CPU.
Linux has drivers for It. Interestingly, my chip, the SLB9635, is flasheable...
All TPM 1.2 Microcontollers have a unique internal RSA 2048 bit private key, (This is the key being hidden to the user) that inserts on the trust chain, whose root is MS, (Not sure about this).
You can tamper with it, flash it, etc. If the chip detect some anomaly, it wont stop working, but only flag it with one bit.
One of many things that can be done with it, is to hash all the software installed and sign it with the private key. Then some vendor can check if you have approved software with valid licenses.
Sure you can put linux and forget about it, but, like the number of the beast, soon you gonna need one to buy and see things.

Alfred

This could become a case of chickens coming home to roost with China and other U.S competitors and adversaries using the TCP (Trusted Computing Platform) to have a back door to computers they produce and which are sold to businesses and governments all over the world.

All they need to do is to make note of the keys or signatures from the TPMs(Trusted Platform Module) that are embedded in every modern PC.

In fact this illustrates the greatest challenge of TCP based DRM. Who will be the key escrow / signing authority in a world where China, Russia and India increasingly shun away from U.S centered IT solutions.

Its all about your right to read.

It's obviously a related chip, but definitely not the same model as the clear picture at the top of the article. The logo's in a different place, and the middle line has a different number of characters in it. However, it's clearly an Infineon chip with the same package. (looks like http://www.infineon.com/cgi-bin/ifx/portal/ep/cont entView.do?channelId=-71967&contentId=100820&progr amId=36188&programPage=%2Fep%2Fprogram%2Fpackage.j sp&pageTypeId=17099&contentType=PACKAGE ) That really doesn't narrow it down.

I notice that Infineon make _no_ mention of Apple, Macintosh, OS-X, or any other related terms on their TPM pages. It's just MS this, Windows that.

I too am not convinced, but could easily be persuaded with proper evidence.

meh. Infineon is a real company, with real products (also real losses... but that's another story *g*). I think you're referring to Infinium.

Posting anonymously, here...

While it is very much correct that the Developer Transition Platform does not represent shipping or production hardware, the motherboard does indeed have an Infineon Trusted Platform Module controller right on the motherboard. Mac OS X for Intel Platforms contains a TCPA/TPM kernel extension, by the name of AppleTPMACPI.kext.

It's very much correct that this doesn't necessarily represent the shipping hardware. Apple today doesn't have serialization, product activation, or any other limiting copy protection technology in place on Mac OS X. It is purely tied to Apple hardware by the Mac OS X EULA, which, by tying Mac OS X to Apple-branded hardware only, effectively quashes any commercial entity from developing and promoting any other platform that might support Mac OS X. Granted, the landscape changes with Mac OS X running on the x86 architecture, but until a production Mac OS X machine ships, there is absolutely nothing to indicate the final scenario one way or the other.

The rest of the article, however, makes no sense in that, while he correctly asserts that the Developer Transition Platform doesn't represent the final shipping product, it does indeed contain an Infineon TPM module.

Keep in mind that the motherboard in the Developer Transition Platform is a very generic one, and could just as easily be a preexisting Intel motherboard that already includes TPM. Remember: everything in the Developer Transition Platform at present is generic Intel components. They don't support FireWire 800, Bluetooth, 802.11, and have a generic standard Intel BIOS. Does that imply shipping machines will be that way? No? Then neither does the inclusion of a TPM chip on this particular motherboard. There is precedent for Apple taking special care to disallow the spread of prerelease/developer software and hardware, while having no such equivalent restrictions in the final product.

In short, to quote Dean Reece of Apple:

"Don't assume that what you see in the transition boxes represents what will be present in the final product."

• Monitoring the trustworthiness of the platform it is bound to.
• Providing strong authentication mechanisms for identifying the platform.
• Providing secure storage for the users keys and secrets.
• Providing additional cryptographic services to applications.

This would be very easy to incorporate and would not only lock the OS but could work for iTunes/iMovie store and all sorts of other things.... http://www.infineon.com/cgi/ecrm.dll/ecrm/scripts/ prod_ov.jsp?oid=29049

I believe that washing machines do not qualify as COMMUNICATIONS equipment

Maybe this one does.

Quantum dot memories in transistor embodiment is still an option.

Moderate this comment
Negative: Offtopic Flamebait Troll Redundant
Positive: Insightful Interesting Informative Funny

Interestingly, there is a press release on this topic on the Infineon web site. Please note a discrepancy between what the Register says and what their press release says...

Register: "Infineon has agreed to pay a $160m fine to the US government for fixing the price of computer memory from 1999 to 2002, one of the biggest ever penalties imposed by the DoJ's Antitrust division."

Infineon: "The wrongdoing charged by the DoJ was limited to certain OEM customers. Infineon is already been in contact with these customers and has achieved or is in the process of achieving settlements with all of these OEM customers."

So, is the government getting the money or the OEMs. Note that either way, the trickle down to regular folks (i.e., you!) will take a long time.

p.s. I love this quote from the Infineon press release: "Infineon strongly condemns any attempt to fix or stabilize prices. Infineon is committed to vigorous and fair competition based solely on superior products and services."

Infineon 0, U.S. Department of Justice 1.

EE Times is also reporting that Intel may be pushing a new kind of RAM interface to compete with existing DDR and RDRAM. At 2 Gbit/sec per wire, this is about twice the speed of current RDRAM and four times the speed of DDR SDRAM. But, more interestingly, this is a point-to-point architecture - unlike the traditional bus architecture, when you add more memory modules you can get more bandwidth. Also notable is that simultaneous bi-directional communications happens over a single wire. Infineon and Samsung have made test chips, and results are to be released at the International Solid State Circuits Conference today.

I wonder how this figures into their processor/chipset roadmap...

This new chip might well be implantable in the brain. But see this comment from the chip's inventor's press release: "The cell tissue is not damaged in this process and can be kept alive over a period of several weeks."

The more ambitious geek with BGA soldering equipment grabs two of these and builds a low power, high quality, digital bluetooth audio transmitter and receiver. Extremely envious fellow geeks guaranteed.

a jointpress release which says "[IBM and MRAM partner Infineon Technologies AG] believe MRAM products could be available commercially as soon as 2004."

a jointpress release which says "[IBM and MRAM partner Infineon Technologies AG] believe MRAM products could be available commercially as soon as 2004."