On September 20, 2018, Hangzhou C-SKY Microsystems Co., Ltd. (“C-SKY Microsystems”) and CEC Huada Electronic Design Co., Ltd. (“HED”) jointly released a “fully independent and controllable” Chinese domestic CPU chip. With this chip from the CIU9872B series SoC chips for dual-interface financial cards independently developed by HED and adopting C-SKY Microsystems’s embedded CPU core - CK802, the two parties moved one step further to the objective of “fully independent and controllable” chips in their efforts to build the Great Wall of CPU “chips.” Since then, Chinese domestic financial chips moved to an important stage of “independently developed CPU, independently developed chips, and independent chip manufacturing.”

HED’s SoC chips for dual-interface financial cards are successfully developed and put into volume production with the help of C-SKY Microsystems

C-SKY Microsystems is a Chinese domestic vendor of embedded CPU IP of volume production at present. Embedded cores from C-SKY Microsystems have advantages of low power consumption, high performance, high code density, and ease of use, and are supported with a comprehensive software and hardware technical ecosystem and application ecosystem as well as professional technical support services. By now, the cumulative shipment of SoC chips based on C-SKY Microsystems’s CPU has reached 800 million. C-SKY Microsystems’s CK802 is provided with software and hardware security engines, and is comprehensively protected from various security threats with its trusted execution environment (TEE) and anti-physical attack technologies. Besides hardware protection technologies, C-SKY Microsystems is capable of constantly applying updates and upgrades in software security technologies in aspects of trusted start-up, image signature, secure storage, date encryption, permission control, device authentication, etc. to safeguard the products of customers.

As a well-known vendor of smart cards, security chips, and application solutions thereof in China, HED has built up experience and technologies in the area of conventional smart cards for over ten years, and its products have been widely used in financial payment, government public utilities, identification, telecommunications, mobile payment, etc. With its experience in technologies, applications, and productization in the smart card industry for years, HED developed the fully independent and controllable SoC chips for dual-interface financial cards by using C-SKY Microsystems’s embedded CPU core - CK802, hence providing “double security” for Chinese domestic financial chips - an inevitable choice under the joint cooperation. C-SKY Microsystems’s CK802 features low power consumption, high code density, and high security; its product architecture is designed by applying power consumption/efficiency balance technologies, anti-SPA attack technologies for instruction processing, bus data anti-probing and anti-tampering technologies to meet the requirements of high performance, high security, and high reliability for application on dual-interface financial IC cards - the requirements for the trend of Chinese domestic financial chips.

The successful development of the fully independent and controllable SoC chips for Chinese domestic dual-interface financial cards reversed the negative situation in which Chinese financial IC cards have to depend on foreign embedded CPU cores. The application of Chinese domestic embedded CPU cores greatly enhances the information security for China’s financial IC cards and financial information systems, hence will play an important role in accelerating the development and maturity of Chinese domestic fully independent and controllable embedded CPU cores and building a stable market position.