Samsung announced today its 90-nanometer (nm) smart card IC with high data storage capacity for subscriber identity module (SIM) cards and mobile TV applications.

The new 90nm smart card IC (S3CC9PF) utilizes a Samsung proprietary 16-bit CalmRISC processor with 16.5KB RAM, 384KB ROM, and a capacity 288KB EEPROM.

The advanced 90nm process technology has been first applied to a 288-kilobyte (KB) electrically erasable and programmable read only memory (EEPROM) embedded smart card IC with plans by the year end to introduce a flash embedded version.

The new smart card IC adopts an accelerator processor and on-chip support for symmetrical encryption/decryption standards (DES/ triple DES), an asymmetrical encryption standard (RSA) and an elliptic curve crypto (ECC) algorithm to provide users with the utmost security support, shortening user verification time by the tens and reinforcing protection against forgery or hacking. The high-level of security enforcement makes the new smart card suitable for mobile TV, mobile payment and mobile ID applications where secured user authentication and data transactions are critical.

Samsung also introduces two new lower-density versions; a 72KB- and a 144KB- embedded EEPROM SIM card IC in 90nm process technology.

Samsung's new SIM card chips are currently sampling with mass production scheduled for the end of 2008.