Mobile commerce
Since that first slide ARM has launched the Cortex M0 - its smallest ever microcontroller. Like pretty much all ARM designs it's 32-bit and that's being positioned as a key USP in a market where a lot of chips are still 8-bit. This design has now been used to create ARM's latest smartcard processor - the SecurCore SC000.
We spoke to ARM marketing VP Ian Drew to find out why this was significant. "This is the same size as 8-bit chips currently being used in smartcards, but is 32-bit," he said. "And size equals cost in semiconductor land."
Regular HEXUS.channel readers may remember a chats we had with both ARM and NXP at this years Mobile World Congress. The two of them were keen to bring attention to the possibilities secure chips embedded in SIM cards or smartcards, in combination with wireless technologies like NFC, could open up for mobile commerce.
"The web is fantastic at giving away free stuff, but what about when you want to pay for things using mobile devices?" said Drew. "The only company that's really cracked that is Apple - the next stage is cracking payments."
Here are some of the things ARM reckons are made possible by switching to a 32-bit microcontroller in smartcards and they ways in which it thinks the SC000 delivers.
