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IBM Smart Card OS On A 1MB Smart Card

Posted by timothy on from the what-will-your-passport-say-about-you dept.

michaelpapet.com writes "IBM has ported/developed their Javacard smart card operating system for Sharp's 1MB smart card. Read Sharp's announcement here. Interesting features include: AES encryption; elliptical curve encryption; and 1MB of storage. Sharp's smart card package claims to be almost as small as a normal smart card package. In an industry that can considers 64K of memory a luxury, 1MB is staggering. Read Sharp's original 1MB smart card announcement here. Is this a 'Build it and they will come...' kind of solution? How small is an 'almost as small' smart card IC package?"

7 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Storage space by AndroidCat · · Score: 3, Informative

    Think of as a 1M hard drive. The card also has a dinky 8K RAM and 8K ROM. (Note that the press release for the card is a year old.)

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  2. Re:Storage space by John+Harrison · · Score: 5, Informative
    I work for IBM with smart cards. My team directect Sharp the the JCOP (Java Card Open Platform) operating system over a year ago. The 1MB is rewritable storage. The OS is stored in ROM. It is a simplified version of Java (the JavaCard standard) that requires very little in the way of resources.

    Functionality is added to the card by securely loading JavaCard applets to the 1MB of storage. More info on JCOP can be found here.

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  3. Re:OS by WhiteDeath · · Score: 2, Informative


    actually, linux runs just fine without an MMU - see uclinux

    There doesn't seem to be a 2.6 version (only 2.4), but then I'm not sure if 2.6 hasn't had uclinux merged in. (a quick look at the config says no)

  4. The 20 Year Cycle by Etcetera · · Score: 4, Informative


    20 years ago, Apple was figuring out how to squeeze a graphical operating system into 128K of RAM. Permanent storage that didn't cost 5 figures was in the 400K range.

    In this day of multi-gigabyte OS installs, it's refreshing to see people return to the "lean and mean" OS mentality, even if it's out of necessity. Hell, even 10 years ago, you could still install an entire installation of Mac OS 7.6 on a set of 10-12 floppies.

    Those were the days. Nice to see such "hack"ish talent used again.

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  5. Just a bunch more Flash by nervesystem · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is really just about adding high density flash to an existing smart card platform. Other then having alot of flash this (16 bit CPU, 4-8K RAM) card is just like most other JavaCards out there (such as in your cell phone or AMEX Blue card). The innovative smart cards these days have 32 bit CPUs such as the P9SC648 from Philips and ST22N256 from ST Micro. The Philips card is alot more powerful then IBM/Sharp's card and still has 512 KB Flash. The ST card has 256 KB Flash and 368 ROM and is shipping now for $4 to $5 in quantity.

  6. Here is the confusion by GoClick · · Score: 4, Informative

    The confusion here is that the average /.er doesn't know that a SmartCard is not a SmartMedia Card.

    A SmartCard is NOT for holding pictures of your cat. It's primarily for identity verification. See
    SmartCard

    A SmartMedia Card IS for storing pictures of your cat or whatever else you might have. This is the large card that goes in SOME digital cameras. SmartMedia is a trademark of Toshiba. It is a flash memory format Please see
    SmartMedia

  7. Re:Storage space by John+Harrison · · Score: 2, Informative

    Lumpy, For one thing, the smart card itself has no concept of Windows or Linux. All it knows about are the APDUs that are coming and going. I don't know why there are no consumer apps. There certainly are in Europe. You can store your browser bookmarks on your bankcard and things like that. I am not sure what sort of "basic information" you want to store. Most vendors concentrate on healthcare, banking, and finance rather than the hobbist market. If you want a password manager ActivCard makes a very capable one. IBM had one in the past but I believe that it has been discontinued. Another reason there are no consumer apps is lack of standards. Until recently most smart cards were very proprietary. Software was written for a specific card platform, burned into the mask, and would not work with other cards. With the advent of JavaCard some of these problems are going away. However that brings us to a new problem of card management. Who owns your smartcard? You might think that you do, but unless you have the keys needed to load new applets, then from the smartcard's point of view you are not in charge. Because of security functionality you can't just sit down, write a Java applet to store your passwords, and load it to your Visa card. This is a good thing, because Visa wants to know that the applets on the card came from them and are legit. However it reduces the hobbyist market substantially, doesn't it?

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