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Microcap & Penny Stocks : ALYA Cost cutting system via software as well as security -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ztect who wrote (1111)	7/2/1998 7:24:00 PM
From: Essam Hamza	Respond to of 2534

Smartcards Get Room to Play Wired News Report 12:30pm 2.Jul.98.PDT Smartcards have had a slow and winding road into the digital mainstream, but a new Motorola development may put them on the fast track. Today, the company announced four new, higher-capacity memory chips for smartcards that free up room for packing more applications onto the credit card-sized devices. The new high-memory smartcard chips, dubbed Venus, will help enable multiple card functions, especially in card-payment and mobile-telecommunications applications, Motorola (MOT) said. "Interest in these chips has been huge. It's what the market has been waiting for," said Daniel Hoste, general manager of the Smart Information Transfer division at Motorola. "In addition to the advanced features offered we have maintained the low power required for cards used in GSM [cell phone] handsets and a cost-competitive price." Manufacturers will get up to 32 kilobytes of a special kind of memory called electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM). EEPROM is used on smartcards because, while a static memory can retain its contents without power, an electric charge will erase the memory for reuse. Smartcards' silicon memories are loaded with data meant to power an electronic exchange. They let users have ready access to digital cash, buildings and networks, as well as tokens for everything from commerce to train rides. Via a smartcard reader, data can be loaded on or unloaded from smartcards. The greater memory of Motorola's new chips lets smartcard makers fit more applications on a card without spending more than they do to make today's single-application cards, the company said. The chips' costs are reduced because they are stamped out of 8-inch silicon wafers -- an industry first for smart chips, Motorola said. The process leads to increased production capacity and lower cost. Venus' key benefit over other similar products is its additional ROM, so the EEPROM can be dedicated to user memory features (e.g., more phone numbers), said Fabien Thiriet, marketing manager for Schlumberger Cyberflex, cited in Motorola's announcement. Schlumberger Cyberflex is a smartcard manufacturer. Competitive EEPROM products have suffered from too little room for ROM, causing valuable EEPROM to be used up with portions of the operating system, Motorola said. wired.com