Single chip solutions based on C51 core with serial communication

Atmel® offers a family of products dedicated to advanced smart card readers. Designed in partnership with key-players in the smart card reader market, these one-chip solutions address any application using a serial, USB or PCMCIA smart card reader, including keyboards, set top boxes, PDAs, POS and mobile phones.

All devices are equipped with the proven double clocked C51 core and do include a DC/DC converter to power different type of smart card and feature low consumption modes that help designing nomad applications. The microcontroller feature different memory configurations from Flash-RAM (for development purpose) to ROM (for volume production).
Main item of this single chip solution (AT89C5121) is the „Smart Card Interface Block“ (SCIB) which is supporting multiple standards like ISO7816, EMV2000, GIE-CB, GSM11.12V and WHQL.
Also synchronous (Memory Card) as well as asynchronous Smart Cards (Microprocessor Card) are supported. A „Card Presence“ switch detects insertion and and card removal.
In case of removal the SCIB deactivates the smart card.

pre-certified Smart Card Reader IC with serial communication

Designing smart card reader applications with multiple protocols as well as claiming certification takes a lot of time and is annoying when it‘s only a part of a complete system. For those designs atmel offers a pre-certified mask version based on GemCore‘s Serial Lite Pro Firmware. The AT83C21GC is a highly integrated, low cost device which uses a generic version of the GemCore software available for all smart card reader using the serial port for control and data communication.

Since the device only communicates via the serial interface, a host connections is required and must provide data and control.
An easy to use API software ist provided by Atmel/GemCore and can be ported to many microprocessor with minimum effort.
Using Atmels AT83C21GC will reduce design cycles dramatically down to 2 weeks.

Single chip solutions based on C51 core with USB interface

Similar to the serial access Atmel also provides devices for interconnection to the USB bus.
As allready described on the previous part AT89C5121, Atmel also uses the well proven double clock C51 core and the „Smart Card Interface Block“ supporting all major standards. The only difference is the USB block which extends communication to the Universal Serial Bus.
Two optimized versions are delivered. The AT89C5122 is available in a small VQFP64 package and provides a lot free ports and LED outputs for additional use. The AT89C5123 is a reduced version of above device, available in a small VQFP32 package, and may be used in systems where space is a major requirement.

pre-certified Smart Card Reader IC with USB access

Again, a major cost factor are long design cycles for Smart Card Readers and also here Atmel offers a pre-certified version. The ROM versions from the AT89C5122/23 are based on a design from OmniKey and are designed to provide access via the USB bus. The AT83C22OK/33OK communicates with the required host system via the USB interface. All drivers neccessary to communicate with the device are part of the design kit.

Reference Design Kits

Atmel is well known for their very efficient starter and reference design kits. To support developers and help them during the evaluation phase, Atmels also provides a Reference design kit here. The reference design kit do support the pre-certified versions for serial and USB access and do contain all required informations to setup a Smart Card Reader project. Schematic, layout with gerber files, software driver and test examples are also part of this kit.
The Reference Design Kit AT89RFD-05 supports the GemCore solution AT83C21GC and the Referenz Design Kit AT89RFD-02 supports the OmniKey Solution AT83C22OK/23OK.

Both tables show a brief overview of availale versions, their memory configurations and packages. The first table gives an overview for all serial accessed devices, for the flash version and the pre-certified version as well.