Eric,
The RSA patent expires 9/20/2000 from what I remember. Very interesting question as to how it might affect the revenue stream. I've been wondering the same, but have no answer. Perhaps they'll just drop the price on the licenses and toolkits.
I am also a big fan of ECC, and am an even bigger fan of Certicom. Implied "I own the stock" disclaimer applies. : )
I'm trying to understand how these two competing algorithms will play in wireless security. Both companies (RSAS and CIC.TO) are signing agreements with wireless companies. CIC recently signed Qualcomm as a licensee and RSA announced a partnership with Ericsson. And then there's Nokie and Entrust, and I believe Entrust only supports RSA at this time.
As I understand it, and perhaps you can confirm this, the price of a smartcard required for RSA is significantly higher than that for ECC. A card that can do RSA must contain an expoentiator, whereas a card for ECC need only be a DSP costing much less. If this is correct, ECC is a much less costly solution, especially when you're talking tens or even hundreds of thousands of smartcards. Why then are SIMs using RSA instead of ECC??? Do you have any insight on this?
Datakey has been struggling a long time it seems. As you say, they seem to have a great product, but there's a cost associated with it. Last time I heard numbers, their cards were prohibitively expensive.
c
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